


A Partial Age of Miracles

by hetrez



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexuality, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Friendship, Getting Back Together, Hand Jobs, Happy Ending, Healing, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Multi, Post-Episode: s04e13 No Better To Be Safe Than Sorry, Post-Season/Series 04, Proof of Concept (The Magicians), Recovery, Resurrection, Romance, unbury your queers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-23 04:48:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19143880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hetrez/pseuds/hetrez
Summary: On the tablet Eliot saw a webpage from the New York Daily News, and at the top was a picture of an old woman, holding her own death certificate and smiling. The headline said, "DEAD RISE AGAIN IN QUEENS, BROOKLYN."Margo said, "You bitches better sober up, because this is a massive goddamn problem, and it just might get us our friend back."Even in the middle of tragedy, sometimes you can have a cosmically lucky accident.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO MY FRIENDS THIS IS A FIX-IT, WELCOME, WELCOME, PLEASE ENJOY.
> 
> However, like, bc I needed to figure out how to get from the garbage fire that was 4.13 to a happy ending, and also bc I needed to process some shit, this fic is roughly 2/3 gross sappy love fest and 1/3 stuff that needs **content warnings**. Those warnings are:  
> \- body horror  
> \- supernatural OCs being creepy as hell  
> \- discussions of Quentin’s suicidality  
> \- discussions of depression  
> \- characters experiencing depression and anxiety attacks  
> \- non-graphic violence toward minor characters  
> \- minor character deaths  
> \- lots and lots and _lots_ of conversations about canonical traumatic events, including but not limited to that time Eliot killed somebody and that time Quentin died
> 
> This fic is for everyone who needs another joyous love story as much as I do. But it is particularly dedicated to **Greywash** , **Achray** , **Petra** , **Celestialskiff** , and **Templemarker**. **Achray** also helped to beta and **Templemarker** talked through plot points and looked it over for me. You are all incredible and I am so grateful to know you, and this is for you.
> 
> Story Note: This fic starts right at the end of 4.13, but doesn’t include the season 5 teaser scenes, so: Eliot and Margo are not 300 years in the future in Fillory, Quentin didn’t see Zelda trying to get Alice to join the Library, and Quentin didn’t see Julia get her magic back.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin takes a breath. Alice, Kady and Eliot have a moment.

So Eliot wasn't allowed to drink with the cornucopia of painkillers and antibiotics they had him on. That had been unbearable until he figured out a workaround. Alcohol was a no-go, but if he vaped a tiny bit of Josh's Purple Alien and pressed at the wound in his belly until he saw stars, it felt enough like being blitzed that he could cope with the day-to-day.

Alice just went for the vodka, which — mad respect, he thought. She was regimented about it, too. During daylight hours she worked on her curriculum for Kady's hedge school, or read up on the feeding and care of boxer puppies. Then, once it got dark, she went at the bottle with the dedication of a fifty year old alcoholic.

Eliot, never one to be outdone in the field of fucking himself up, added a tiny bit of cocaine to his weed and self-harm cocktail. Then, each night, when they were both so out of it that living without Quentin almost didn't hurt anymore, they would trade stories.

"Did he lick the tips of your fingers?" Eliot asked one night. "Like, if you touched his face, sometimes while you were fucking — he would turn his head and just lick any part of you that he could reach."

Eliot and Alice were lying on Josh's flying-saucer bed with the lights out, passing his vape back and forth, both of them on their backs in the dark and staring up at the ceiling. If he closed his eyes, he could almost remember the feeling of it, and the way Quentin would shudder when Eliot touched him. Eliot felt grief claw at him like a tiger.

Alice took a drink. "Yeah," she said, sounding hazy. "I kind of thought that was a little. Weird."

What? Blasphemy. "I loved it," Eliot said. He pushed a little on his stitches and the room went swimmy. "And he'd bite them, too." God, it had been amazing.

Alice coughed a little into the vodka bottle. "I never really, it didn't really do anything for me." At Eliot's scandalized look she said, quickly, "But the other things we did were nice!"

Eliot nodded. The other things Quentin had done with him had been _very_ nice. But this one —

Eliot had fucked a medium number of men, and a very small number of women. But he had never before been with someone who seemed so overcome by the _fact_ of him: his skin and his wrists and the bristly hair of his sideburns, his ears and his knees and his hands. It used to take Quentin all of thirty seconds to go completely mindless, trying to touch any part of Eliot any way he could, rubbing his cheek against Eliot's shoulder or mouthing at the knobs of Eliot's spine, or — or licking the tips of his fingers, like a cat, and then biting them, _god_.

Alice said, "It _was_ good. But I wanted him to push me, you know?"

Eliot hummed. "I can guess," he said delicately. He had probably met other women in his life who needed to be taken apart more than Alice Quinn, but he surely didn't fucking remember them.

Alice took swig of vodka, and wiped her chin. "And when he asked me if I wanted to try again, I kept thinking, 'This time, I'll be honest about all of it."

Eliot flinched. He took another puff from his vape. "Yeah."

Alice said, "I shouldn't be thinking like this. I should," she rolled over onto her stomach, somehow keeping the vodka bottle upright, and muttered into the comforter. "It should be this beautiful pink-tinged softcore baby deer lovemaking, like in a Swedish porno or something."

Eliot turned his head and stared at her. "Excuse me?"

She tilted her head up at what looked like an excruciating angle, and frowned at him. "Because he's dead," she said. Then her expression crumpled, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Eliot felt a jolt of sadness, and pressed against his wound until he gasped. "I should be talking about the good things. What I loved about him. Not thinking that I wish he'd been, you know. Rougher. In bed."

Eliot took a second to gather his thoughts. Then he said, "You don't need to talk about the good things."

Alice rolled onto her back again, and she gave this horrible angry laugh that he felt under his ribs. "Don't tell me you're going to complain about, I don't know, that sound he used to make right before he — every time. He made it every time."

"I loved that sound," Eliot said.

"Every time!" Alice said. "See? You're doing the good grieving widow thing and I'm over here like a bitch saying he should have been better at fucking."

And Eliot — felt like he'd been ripped open. He hadn't been expecting it, and the surprise of it hurt almost more than the grief. "I'm not a widow," he said, and tried to sit up.

"He was _good_ at fucking!" Alice said. "Mostly. And yes you are."

Eliot made it to sitting, the wound in his abdomen pulsing with pain. "Neither of us are _widows_."

Alice sat up too, her legs splayed out in front of her like a little kid's. She leaned forward, intent, watching him. "Don't lie to me, Eliot. Not to me."

"I'm not lying," he said viciously, grabbing the vodka, and then remembered, god fucking _dammit_ , that he couldn’t drink. "And fuck off. This is fun and all, but nobody gets to call themselves a widow if they say no when he asks them to marry him."

Alice flinched, like he'd hurt _her_ , instead of the other way around, and then she looked so sympathetic he wanted to tear her fucking face off. "Eliot," she started.

"No," he said, and shoved the bottle back at her.

Alice didn't get to say anything else, thank god, before the bedroom door crashed open, and Margo stormed in.

"Are you fuckers _high_ right now?" she asked, which was so unfair. She had been the one to give him the Purple Alien.

Eliot said, reproachful, "Bambi, you know sativa is good for chronic pain."

Alice lifted the bottle in a toast. "And what's more chronic than death?" Eliot laughed, his anger fading back into grief, and then he toasted her with his vape.

Margo walked over and threw her tablet on the bed between them. "Fucking everything is, right now," she said.

What?

Margo turned on the bedside lamp, and he and Alice squinted like vampires. Then he caught sight of the tablet and froze, staring. His heart started to pound.

Margo said, "It looks like they’re trying to do a news blackout, but the local papers are running with it. Some granny got whacked in Bed Stuy yesterday, and this morning she walked into a police station to press charges. The President’s been screaming ‘fake news’ on Twitter all day, which you know means some shit’s going down.”

Alice let go of the bottle of vodka, and it tipped over and spilled onto Eliot's foot and the comforter. She touched the tablet with hands that shook. Eliot couldn't move.

On the tablet he saw a web page from the New York Daily News, and at the top was a picture of an old woman, holding her own death certificate and smiling. The headline said, "DEAD RISE AGAIN IN QUEENS, BROOKLYN."

Margo said, "You bitches better sober up, because this is a massive goddamn problem, and it just might get us our friend back."

—-

Quentin hugged Penny, braced himself, clutched his Metrocard, and walked through the doorway.

The doorway hummed, and for a second everything shuddered. He felt air on his face and breath in his lungs and blood under his skin, a shocking flash of life in the middle of the cool, still, empty Underworld. Then

Quentin —

Quentin hugged Penny, braced himself, clutched his Metrocard, and walked through the doorway.

The doorway shuddered. He felt the passage of time inside his body, seconds and seconds like he hadn't felt since he —

Quentin hugged Penny and braced himself and

The doorway made a growling sound, like an animal in pain.

Quentin walked through the doorway.

The doorway —

Quentin clutched his Metrocard and walked

And the doorway shone bright as the sun and it swallowed him and

He braced himself and he hugged Penny and he

walked

through

And then he stumbled to a halt in the middle of the Brakebills lab, and he was alive.

Quentin was, he was, he was, he was, he was _alive_.

The world around him was colorless, flat, and still the vibrancy of it made him want to cry. He could breathe. He rubbed his fingers against his hoodie sleeve, hungry for sensation, and the softness and the scratch of it were so good. The feeling of his hair falling over his forehead, his feet squeezed awkwardly inside his shoes, and the smell of the air —

The air smelled of metal and glass and blood. When he took a step it echoed and echoed. He turned in circles, trying to laugh, trying not to weep. He was alive alive alive. He was — 

And then, suddenly, he snapped back into himself, and saw he wasn't in the Brakebills lab at all, he was in the mirror world.

There was snow falling outside the windows, like he remembered. The giant, impossible doorway to the Seam stood in front of him like a gaping mouth, just the way he remembered. And in front of the mirror was Everett, in his suit and tie, hands behind his back, watching Quentin.

"Hello, Quentin," Everett said.

—-

There was enough ambient for a sobering spell, but magic had been twitchy as hell since it all came back, and casting often had unforeseen results. So Eliot and Alice had to try to sober up by walking in circles and drinking water and thinking about how _Quentin might be alive again_. Eliot stumbled along with his cane, while Alice paced with her phone out.

Alice said, "It's real. Here’s a blog post from an assistant at the Columbia Presbyterian morgue.”

Margo, sitting on the couch with the vodka, raised her eyebrows. "From when?"

Alice executed a perfect heel-turn and kept scrolling. Just watching her made Eliot tired. He stumped along with his cane. "Yesterday. He says they tried to perform an autopsy on a man and he woke up before they got out the scalpel."

Eliot cringed, his skin crawling.

"Yeesh," Margo said.

Alice said, "I had a page open before. There was a woman — they’d already done the autopsy and she —“

"Yeah, we get it," Margo said, watching Eliot and looking worried. He must have been nearly green. He struggled over to the couch and slumped down next to her, his belly one giant stretch of searing pain. Margo curled up against him, and Eliot, touch-hungry and hurting, leaned into it.

Alice said, “Someone took the page down, though, and I can’t find an archived version.” She looked frustrated with herself.

Whatever. She was doing more than Eliot was. “What do you have right now?” he asked.

Alice turned on a dime again and marched, and marched. “I found three in New York State, and at least seven across the country. There’s no similarity in age, race, profession, how they — how they died.”

The more Eliot sobered up, the harder it was to look at her. They had traded stories and fucked-up truths every day since the memorial service, and now she knew too much about him. She knew about the alternate timeline, and the moment he'd turned Quentin down in the throne room, and how he'd gotten out of his happy place. He knew how she'd tortured Quentin when she was a niffin, and how good it had felt to her in the moment, and how sick it made her now, to remember. Every night for the last week, after she left, he felt raw and scraped clean on the inside, seen and known. It was amazing, and he hated it, and he hated how much he needed it. But if anyone in the world understood what he'd thrown away, it was Alice. The fact that she hadn't lit him on fire yet meant that maybe, one day, he might be absolved.

"How long has it been happening?" Margo asked.

"I don't know," Alice said. "A day, maybe two? No, wait," she said, stopping in the middle of the living room and hunching over her phone. "Twitter again.”

“God bless the internet’s last bad trip,” Margo said, toasting Alice with the vodka.

“There's a story here about a girl who died last week,” Alice said, ignoring her with what Eliot thought was remarkable poise. “She was hit by a car, and yesterday she appeared out of nowhere on the street, even though she'd already been buried." She looked up, her eyes huge. "She died before Quentin did. If it's —"

"A matter of timing," Margo said. Eliot felt her go tense as a hunting hound, where she leaned on him. She was so beautiful and so fierce, and he loved her so much. "If everyone who kicks it after this date has a shot at the revolving door and could pop back out again —"

"Yes," Alice said, and Eliot loved her, too. “It’s a small chance, but it’s better than nothing.”

“But why these people?” Margo asked. “If there’s a list, how do we get him on it? If he’s alive now, how do we find him?“

Alice said, “Locator spell —“ and ran out of the room, leaving Eliot clinging to Margo on the couch and hoping, hoping.

Margo squeezed tighter against his side, and it made his wound ache but he needed it. He held her in the late-night quiet.

She said, "El," and he kissed the side of her face. Please, he thought. Please.

Alice came back carrying a dish, and she plonked it on the coffee table so hard the whole thing rattled. “If he’s anywhere on Earth, we’ll find him,” she said. Eliot leaned forward, staring. Alice dropped a paper in the dish, did her tuts, and waited.

And.

Nothing.

Alice stared at her hands. She did it again, which — magic was wonky, maybe this time it would take — but. Nothing.

The look of slowly-withering hope on Alice’s face was awful, so Eliot looked at the dish instead. He felt hollow as a drum.

“I’m sorry, Alice,” Margo said. "I shouldn’t have —" 

“No,” Alice said, “I would have seen the news at some point and wondered, and I would have done the spell on my own. I’m glad,” her voice shook a little. “I’m glad I wasn’t alone.”

The dish was brass, with a single word stamped over and over around the rim. Nitafute, nitafute. Swahili, he thought, remembering his language classes. It was a nice dish. Something in the back of his mind started ticking, like a pocketwatch.

Margo leaned into Eliot and pressed a kiss to his shoulder, and said, quietly, “I’m so sorry, El.” She sounded like she was crying.

Alice hadn’t really needed the dish. You could cast a locator spell in anything, an ashtray or a bucket, or a spoon if it was big enough. But this was something that had come with the apartment, like the trashy spiral staircase and the flying saucer bed. And it was nice, to have tools that fit the magic they wanted to do. Eliot’s Swahili was execrable on a good day, but the word on the dish was easy. Find me, it said, and the ticking in his head got louder.

Find me. Well, Eliot was going to try.

“Alice,” he said slowly, “cast a locator spell on Josh.”

“El," Margo said. He looked at her, and she bit her lip. "Come on, we have to stop, now."

"Why?" Alice asked. She sounded more tired than he'd ever heard her before.

"Just do it,” he said. “Please.”

"Eliot —" Alice said.

But the more he thought about it, the more he was sure. Tick tick tick. "Look, just trust me. Locator spell, lover of tomatoes, chop chop."

"I can’t,” Alice snapped. “He’s in Fillory. Locator spells will only work in the realm where — oh shit.”

Eliot felt a zing of electricity go up his spine. Margo dug her fingernails into his arm, hard.

Eliot said, “That girl who appeared on the street. She came back to where she was hit, right?”

“Yes,” Alice said. She stared at him, eyes huge, her face filled with hope again. "Exactly where she was hit."

Eliot knew it, like he knew his name. He said, “If Q’s alive again, he won’t be on Earth. He’ll be in the mirror world. We'll find him where he died."

Find me, the dish said, and Eliot thought, Soon.

—-

Quentin, remembering, heartbroken, and incandescently angry, put his hands up, ready to cast battle magic. "I killed you," he said. He'd destroyed himself to do it, and it hadn't even stuck. What had been the point of all of this, if he hadn't really managed to save anyone? "You're not supposed to be here."

Everett raised his hand, a quiet 'wait' gesture that made Quentin even angrier. Fuck waiting. He'd died once already from waiting. But then Everett said, "I'm no threat to you," and Quentin laughed, high and panicky, and somehow he couldn't stop laughing long enough to cast.

Then Everett took a step toward him, and it was easy to stop laughing after that. "Do _not_ move," he said, lifting his hands. "I have exactly zero problems killing you again."

Everett smiled. He was so — boring. A little nothing man, a gray bureaucrat. Kady had sounded furious when she talked about him, and Zelda had sounded betrayed, confused, devastated. But Everett himself was as nondescript as Quentin felt all the time.

Everett said, "And what do you think would happen after that, Quentin?"

Quentin shrugged, keeping his hands up. "Does it matter?"

"Very much so," Everett said. "Why do you think we're back here?" He waved around him, his hands encompassing the doorway to the Seam, the not-lab, the snow, the empty cold unreality of the mirror world. "If you kill me, you'll die too, and we'll both just come back again."

He was so incredibly reasonable, this nothing man. But Quentin knew gray nothing. It sat inside him every day like a gargoyle, poisoning him against himself. It pulled out pieces of him and drained all the color, and then shoved them back in sideways. It told lies. It hurt his friends.

And Quentin wanted to _live_. He knew it now. Every part of him sang with it. He wanted to eat toaster waffles, and sleep in, and smell the star jasmine in the greenhouse at the Botanic Garden. He wanted to hug his friends. He wanted to kiss Alice again. He wanted, with a bolt of longing so sudden and savage that it almost doubled him over, to kiss Eliot.

But this gray nothing man would poison the world if Quentin let him, and Quentin was so tired, and he just didn't know what else to _do_.

"I'll take that chance," Quentin said. He started casting. Please let me survive this time, he thought.

Everett said, "Wait—"

The world around them chimed like a bell. Quentin heard it, because he lived.

—-

To get to the mirror world they needed to track down Penny 23, and then they needed to tell Julia, who needed to tell Kady, who needed to contact Zelda, who said that yes, some of the formerly-dead Librarians were back and alive, but not all, and no she didn’t know why, and no she had no leads, and no she was not helpful at all. Then they needed to call Henry and convince him that there was a chance, just a chance, and let him know they'd be using a mirror at the school — and so, with one thing and another, it was mid-morning before they were ready to move.

Eliot grabbed his coat and cane and made to follow, and Kady held up a hand to stop him.

"You're not coming with us," she said.

Eliot bristled. "Go fuck yourself, I'm not."

Kady said, "Look, you're injured. You're a liability.”

Next to him, Margo opened her mouth, looking ready to bring the hammer down. Eliot squeezed her hand, and she glanced at him sideways and then let him handle it. Eliot motioned to Kady's waistband. "Give me that gun you're hiding under your blazer, and I'm backup."

Everyone but Julia turned to stare at Kady. "You still have your _gun_?" Penny asked, sounding scandalized.

"Yes," Kady said, "because I'm not stupid. How else are we going to defend ourselves in a place where we can't do magic?" She turned to Eliot. "And what makes you think I would give it to you?"

Eliot shrugged. "Because I'm a better shot than you are?" Technically, he was a better shot with a hunting rifle, not a glock, but Kady didn't need to know that.

Kady raised her eyebrows. "Prove it," she said.

Julia stepped between them. "Look, we don't have time for this," she said. Bless her, Eliot thought. "If he wants to come, he should be able to come."

Kady squinted at him. Eliot gave her his best bored monarch look back. Then she shrugged and pulled the gun out from the back of her waistband, and held it out to him. "You really know how to use one of these things?"

"I swear on my life," he said. He didn't say that his aim had been perfect when he'd shot the Monster in Blackspire. They all knew what he'd done, anyway.

Kady rolled her eyes, but she let him take the gun, so whatever. He checked the safety, racked the slide, and stuck the gun in his jacket pocket. Kady, watching him, nodded. "Okay," she said, sounding halfway between a drill sergeant and a kindergarten teacher. "First stop: Brakebills. Second stop: the mirror world. If he’s there, we’re gonna find him. Everybody get ready."

Eliot was ready. He was so _fucking_ ready. He limped over to Penny and grabbed an unclaimed patch of arm, with Margo hanging onto his other hand. He ended up next to Alice, and met her eyes, and she smiled, bright and tremulous. They were going to get Quentin back, they were, they were. His own smile, when he tried it on, felt bright and tremulous as well.

He was still smiling when they vanished.

—-

Quentin lived. He — Jesus Christ — he lived.

It was pure blind luck; he was close enough to the doorway that he could dodge the ricochet this time. He crashed into the wall across from the not-lab and scrambled away just as a shower of bright, vicious sparks came pouring out. He hadn't remembered how _loud_ it was, or maybe he hadn't noticed the last time. The whole world, in those terrifying moments, sounded like it was weeping.

After the sparks died out, he crept back, as slowly and quietly as he could. The lab, when he glanced back inside, was clean and empty as a piece of glass, and the mirror leading to the Seam was pristine. Everett was gone.

Quentin caught his breath (alive, alive) and it turned into a sob, and then he was sinking down to the floor, huddled into a crouch in the door-frame, and hyperventilating into his bunched-up hoodie. He stayed there for minutes, maybe, while the world around him echoed terrifyingly and he couldn't catch his breath, and then Everett said, "Oh, for fuck's sake."

Quentin stopped breathing. He looked up and saw Everett next to the Seam, still in his pristine Librarian suit, an irritated expression on his face. "Do you have any idea how much that stings?" he asked.

Quentin wished with all his goddamn heart that his friends were there with him, because he had no idea what to do next.

"Don't bother apologizing," Everett said, taking a step toward him. He sounded like someone had cut in line in front of him at Starbucks. "I know you wouldn't mean it."

Quentin stood up, bracing himself against the doorway. What next, what next, what next? He didn't answer, just watched Everett and waited for an idea.

"But I am glad that we're here together. I really think we understand each other."

"Uh huh," Quentin said. Jesus shitting Christ. "And why's that?"

Everett said, "We're both willing to do whatever needs to be done. No matter how much it might hurt us. I admire you, really."

Oh god, Quentin thought.

Everett said, "The world needs more men like you — good, honorable. Heroes. I've read all the books, Quentin; I know what happens next. And I think we should have a talk."

Quentin, tired and scared and so sad, his heart pounding and the breath struggling in his chest, felt the tiniest hook of it catch in the back of his mind. What if? he thought.

Then, Oh shit, he thought.

Quentin ran.

—-

The six of them traveled to Brakebills, hopping into the classroom Henry had promised would be empty. While Penny scratched a line on the back of his arm and Alice talked him through the symbols, Eliot waved at the classroom door to lock it. He looked around, at the wooden walls and the jars of dried leaves and pieces of snakeskin. This hadn't been his home for a long time, but he was startled by the weight of the affection he felt for it. This was where he had met Margo, and Quentin. This was where he had found himself. This was where he might find Quentin, again.

"Okay," Alice said. "Remember, nobody do any magic. Follow me and Penny, and watch out for shards."

She stepped through the mirror. Eliot watched the others follow, and he limped after them. The mirror looked normal, except for the blood, and as he put his hand toward it he expected it to feel cool and still and flat. Instead, it was like putting his hand into a stream of freezing cold water. He hissed, and the mirror yanked at him, and then he was through.

Alice had explained the mirror world to him, a little, during their late-night confessionals. She had loved it when she was a niffin, she said. It was clean, and pure, and weird as hell, and utterly inhuman. Eliot felt all of those things, standing in what could have been the Brakebills hallway if it wasn't so completely wrong. Kady and Margo both looked as spooked as he felt, while Penny seemed worried and Alice stood like a warrior queen. Julia was staring at her hands, looking astonished.

Alice said, "This way," and started off down the hallway at a clip. Eliot had to scramble to catch up. He snagged Julia on the way, and she stumbled after him for a second before she righted herself and rushed ahead.

The hallway could have come from Brakebills, but it branched and branched, folding in on itself and then twisting out again. Eliot didn't know how long they walked. His wound felt — strange. He could move just as fast as the rest of them, for a change, and something about his injury felt dull and red and _aware_ , like it had come alive as soon as he stepped through the mirror. Margo had taken his hand when they all started walking, and he tried to pay attention to her fingers linked with his, so he wouldn't think about his torn abdomen, or the way the walls around them nearly throbbed, or the fact that all of this might be for nothing, if Quentin hadn’t come back.

"Here!" Alice said, up ahead of them. She was almost at a door, rushing now, her footsteps so loud he felt the echo rattle his teeth. "It's here, the Seam is — oh, fuck."

Eliot looked at Margo, who stared back, and then they both started forward at a run. Penny caught up to Alice, and said, "Eliot, man, we need you."

Kady, ahead of them, reached the doorway and froze, and Julia took one look inside and stepped out of the way, letting Eliot through.

Inside the doorway was a large room that looked like any Brakebills classroom — except. Except that this one had a giant window to outer space sitting in the middle, pulling and pulling at his mind, and in front of it stood a little man in a gray suit. Eliot had never met him before, but he knew immediately who it was.

"Everett," Kady hissed.

Everett smiled. "Hello, Kady," he said, voice mild. He sounded like a sociopath, or maybe a college guidance counselor. "It's good to finally meet you."

"Uh huh, same," Kady said, sounding disgusted.

Everett glanced over at Alice, then Penny, and his face spasmed. "Maybe we could speak somewhere privately?"

"Oh, sure," Eliot said, pulling his gun out. "We should absolutely do that."

Everett looked at the gun. "You know that won't work on me."

"Doesn't have to kill you," Eliot said, "as long as it hurts like hell." He wanted it to hurt like hell. Let Everett feel even a fraction of what Eliot felt every goddamn day.

Margo said, "Yeah, this is great and all, but _where's Quentin_?"

Everett sighed. It made Eliot want to beat his face in with the glock. He said, "What a disappointing young man."

"Everett," Kady said, a clear warning in her voice.

Please, Eliot thought. Please, please, please.

Everett said, "He ran away. I'm sure he's still around here somewhere."

And Eliot had hoped, he had wanted to believe, but it wasn't until that moment that he trusted that Quentin had come back. He felt it like an electric shock, the gratitude and the joy of it. He almost put his gun down and ran, but — no. Everett needed to pay.

"Kady," Julia said, sounding frantic.

"Go," Kady said, "we've got this."

Julia and Penny left. Eliot glanced at Margo, begging, and she nodded and followed them. He turned back to Everett, his gun hand steady. Kady and Alice moved forward, and Everett frowned and them and shook his head, and tsked.

Eliot took the safety off the gun.

—-

The hallways here weren't anything like the hallways at Brakebills, not really. But they were enough of a shadow of what he knew that he could look for a place to hide.

Quentin found a side-room, completely empty, with cabinets set into the walls along the floor that he could squeeze into if needed. He imagined himself tucked in there like Lex from Jurassic Park — only she got out afterward and kicked some ass, and Quentin couldn't even figure out how to kill one fascist tax collector without fucking it up again and again. He sat on the floor and wrapped his arms around his knees, shaking and trying not to breathe too loud.

It was strange, feeling his heart pound again, feeling the adrenaline rush of terror. He'd been ready to rip the mirror world to pieces a few minutes ago, but now the idea of being hurt, of going up in a shower of sparks again, of giving in to that gray nothing voice, made him curl into a ball and hide.

He knew he wanted to live. He hadn't known he didn't want to die.

—-

Everett told Kady, "Zelda led me to believe you were much more reasonable than this."

"Yeah, well I'm not," Kady said, nearly hissing.

Everett took a step toward her, and Eliot clicked his teeth and brought his gun up. Everett glanced at him, and then frowned. "Then what are we even doing here, if you're not going to listen to me?"

"I'm making sure you can never go near Q again," Eliot volunteered.

Kady said, "I'm trying to decide where to hit you first."

Everett looked at Alice. His face did that weird spasm again, like he was a glitchy television set, and for a split second Eliot could see the savagery underneath. Everett said, "Alice. I hope you at least will listen."

Alice frowned. Eliot could almost see the gears turning inside her brain. She tilted her head, watching Everett, and then she looked around the lab. She looked at the doorway that Julia and Margo and Penny had disappeared through. She looked at the giant portal to outer space. She looked at Everett. She looked at her hands. And then she looked at Eliot.

"I've been thinking about where we could put him," she told Eliot, all casual-like, as if Everett were a puppy they were trying to house-train. "There are cells here, and we could leave him in the poison world."

"Prison," Everett said, sounding disgusted. "You all are such children. Making decisions for the world that aren't yours to make."

" _Fuck_ you," Kady said. She flicked a glance at Alice, and Eliot saw something pass between them, and then she looked back at Everett. She said, "Thirteen hedges are dead because of you. They had nothing to do with your bullshit war against the gods. I think the poison world is too good for you. Maybe I'll light a fire in the Library and lock you in there with it, so you can watch your precious books burn."

Everett looked at Kady and the mask fell away completely, not a glitch or a crack, and even with everything Eliot had seen and lived through, it was terrifying. They couldn't let this man get out, they couldn't. He looked back at Alice. If anybody could think of what to do next, it would be her.

Alice, when he found her, was watching him again. The force of her gaze was an almost physical thing. All of a sudden he knew exactly what she was planning, and he loved her for it. His whole heart, in that moment, belonged to Alice. He nodded, giving his blessing, and she gave him a grateful, shaky smile and nodded back.

Then her expression went niffin-smooth. She took a step, silent.

Everett opened his mouth, and Kady said, "Maria Bridges."

Alice took a step.

"What?" Everett asked.

Kady said, "Kenneth Waller. Adrian Gold. Yunni Lee. Malcolm Jefferson."

Alice took a step.

Everett asked, "Is this supposed to mean something to me?" His mask was back in place, that horrible little bureaucrat smile. The one that looked almost sweet, with no malice visible underneath, all the rot and poison hidden away.

"It should," Kady said. "These are the hedges you sentenced to death. Vonna Brady, Howard Yoshimoto. Max Lang. Do you even know what they looked like? You don't, do you?" Kady shook her head and said, venomous, "You're going to suffer, and I'm _glad_."

Everett frowned. "What —"

But by then Alice had reached Everett, and he finally turned to look at her, much too late. Eliot felt it to his fingertips and the top of his head, the bloodthirsty, devastating, impossible satisfaction of it, when Alice put both her hands on Everett's chest and shoved him into the Seam.

—-

Quentin heard them before he saw them. Or, well, he heard Margo.

"The fuck kind of bullshit world even is this?" she was saying. The echo in the mirror world made it seem like it was coming from everywhere. His hands spasmed on his bent knees, and he fought the urge to curl up as tight as a pill bug. For a moment, just one, he wanted to hide from her as much as he had from Everett. Margo was — the world was — it was too much, it hurt too much. And where Margo was, there would be Eliot, and for one cowardly moment Quentin felt like, if he saw Eliot again, he'd shatter like window glass and they'd never be able to find all the pieces of him.

Maybe Quentin could stay here, alone and safe, until whatever was wrong with the world played itself out and he felt strong enough to move again.

Then he heard Julia say, "Q told me it was like a leak from another universe into this one," and why would he ever want to hide, when Julia was out there looking for him?

He stood up, and took a breath, and called her name. He heard her say, "Q? Oh my god, you —" and then he heard the sound of running. He had enough time to look around once, memorizing the place where he'd get to see her again, and then she was there, with her goofy blazer and her wonderful smile, pelting across the room and slamming into him so hard they both fell back and whacked into the cabinets. "Oh my god, oh my god," Julia said, her face pressed to the side of his neck. "Q, oh my god."

"Jules," he said, and breathed her in, feeling shaky and too-full and overjoyed.

"I was gonna go down to the Underworld," she said, sounding close to tears. He closed his eyes. "I was going to find a gift for the dragon, and then I was going to go up to Hades, and I was going Orpheus and Eurydice that shit. I was gonna make Eliot teach me how to sing."

Quentin laughed, and then he started crying. He opened his eyes and saw Margo — god, Margo, magnificent fucking Margo, smiling at him with her hands curled up in front of her mouth — with Penny in the doorway, watching over him and Julia like they were standing guard. He waved at them, and then felt awkward, and then felt silly for feeling awkward. He told Julia, "I'm glad you didn't have to sing."

She pulled back, smiling her beautiful smile, tears running down her face. He could look at her smile forever, he thought. She pushed his hair out of his face, softly, with one hand, and then cupped his cheek. "You can't leave me again, okay?"

Quentin nodded. "Okay," he said, and meant it. "I won't. I promise."

—-

The satisfaction of watching Everett disappear into outer space didn't fade as Eliot put the safety back on his gun. It didn't fade as he made his limping way across the room to Alice and Kady. Alice was looking at her hands, at the Seam, at Kady, at the floor. She shook her hands out. She said, "I'm not sorry."

Kady was staring at the place where Everett had disappeared, looking drained and savage and ecstatic, like a boxer after a championship match. But at Alice's words she frowned and asked, "Why would you be sorry?"

Alice made a face. "Honestly? Because it was me pushing him instead of you." Eliot reached her, and put an arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him without looking away from Kady, and gripped the back of his jacket.

Kady looked away from the Seam, then, and shook her head. She said, "It feels like I did it, too. Isn't that weird?"

"Not so weird," Eliot said. Kady didn't look away from Alice, but she nodded. The moment stretched and stretched, and Eliot sank into it, feeling some huge unnameable emotion for the both of them, while Kady and Alice stared at each other like they were in a high school production of _Swoon_ , or maybe cosplaying as Bonnie and Clyde. "Once you kill a man together, you have kind of a connection afterwards, you know?" He said it lightly, but fuck him if he didn't mean it.

Alice's shoulders shook like she was trying not to laugh, and then Kady looked at him and smiled — maybe the first time she had ever smiled at him. What a world they lived in. Kady said, "Well," and then they heard footsteps outside and Quentin's voice (his voice, fuck, he was back, it was real) saying, "Really? With the playing cards?"

Alice froze, and then she said, "Kady, can I have a minute —"

And Kady glanced at Eliot and nodded, and left without a word.

Alice turned under Eliot's arm, looking up at him. She was so small, to have such a towering strength inside of her. He remembered, all of a sudden, how much he had liked her in the first few months they knew each other, before he'd taken their friendship and torn it to pieces, and buried them in salt so they couldn't grow again. Funny, that he hadn't thought of that while they were getting fucked up every night and missing Quentin so much it hurt to breathe. Or maybe not so funny.

Alice said, "We probably should have talked about this back when we were drinking." She was so _kind_ , in her prickly Alice way.

Eliot wasn't kind, and he wasn't selfless, but he understood the way the world worked. There wasn't a high school movie about boys like Eliot; there weren't any songs. And he could survive, being happy for this woman who was becoming his friend again. Being happy for Quentin. Anything was survivable, if Quentin was alive again. He leaned down and kissed Alice's forehead, and then smiled into her startled face. He said, "What's to talk about? One of my best friends just came back from the dead, and his girlfriend is standing here with me instead of going to see him."

Alice frowned at him. "All right," she said.

Outside the room, Quentin said, "Kady, wow, a hug. Okay."

"Go," Eliot told Alice.

She went.

It was — good, it was good to have a few minutes, just him and the empty room and the doorway to outer space. He hadn't let himself think about it since Margo gave him the tablet, not once: how it was his fault Quentin had been hurt so much, and his fault Quentin had died. How, if he ever forgave Eliot, it would be because the goodness in Quentin's soul shone out like sunlight, and not because Eliot deserved it.

Outside, he could hear crying, and Quentin saying, "Alice, Alice, I'm so sorry, I missed you so much."

It was good. Quentin was alive, and Eliot wouldn't hurt him again. And he'd had fifty good years. Wanting anything else was impossible.

After a few minutes, the sound of talking died down. Eliot watched the window to outer space. It was mesmerizing, really. He heard the sound of footsteps walking away, and took a breath. Get on with it, Waugh, he thought.

He made his slow way to the door and stepped out, and saw Quentin leaning against the wall in the empty hallway, waiting for him.

Eliot made some sound, probably. His knees did the cliche thing, going weak. He gripped the head of his cane. Quentin, watching him, put a hand out. "God, sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. Are you okay?"

Eliot started to laugh. He loved Quentin so much. "Am I — am I _okay_?"

Quentin grimaced. "Yeah, um. Maybe not." He kept _looking_ at Eliot, and his hands were twitching like he wanted to reach out. Eliot wanted him to reach out. Quentin said, "You're alive."

Eliot laughed again, harder than he had since before he'd been stabbed. "Ta-daa," he said, and made jazz hands like an awkward theater kid. He had no fucking idea what he was even saying. He just — had no idea about any of it. He wanted so much, and he didn't know what he was allowed.

Quentin's fidgeting hands stilled, and he set his jaw. He pushed off the wall and walked into Eliot's space and just kept moving until Eliot wrapped him up in a hug, propping them both against the door-frame. He smelled like ozone underneath the familiar Quentin-smell, and the feeling of his body was indescribable. He was shaking.

"Oh my god," Quentin said. "Oh my god. Eliot."

"Hey," Eliot said, as softly as he could, nosing at Quentin's hair. "Hey, I got you."

Quentin didn't answer, just clutched him tighter.

"I'm here, you're safe," Eliot said. "You're okay."

"Are you safe?" Quentin asked, sounding desperate. "Are you okay?"

Eliot had no idea. Did it matter? "I'm safe," he said.

He wanted to run his hands over Quentin's back, touch Quentin's solid shoulders. Eliot wanted to get down on his knees right there and lick the skin above Quentin's waistband, or maybe fall asleep curled around Quentin to keep him safe and contained. He wanted, with a longing that felt too big to hold inside of himself, to kiss Quentin, just kiss him, and not stop. In this lifetime, he'd only gotten the one night, but he wanted everything.

Instead, because he wasn't going to get it, he tugged a little on Quentin's collar and said, "I got you."

"Yeah," Quentin said, breathless and shaky. "I've got you, too."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margo gets a hug. Quentin and Eliot listen to some music.

At some point he definitely stopped hugging Eliot, but by then he was a little hazy — with the aftermath of all that emotion, and the adrenaline crash, and being resurrected or whatever. So he stopped hugging Eliot, and then Eliot was pulling him down the hallway, and everybody else was standing next to the mirror, waiting for him. It was almost a good thing, that he felt like his brain was wrapped up in cotton batting, because the world outside the mirror was bright as neon and electric with sound and feeling and smell and sensation.

He discovered that he had his fingers linked with Eliot's when Eliot squeezed his hand and stumbled, coming out of the mirror. "El?" he asked, and Margo whipped her head around, looking spooked.

But Eliot shrugged it off, motioning to his abdomen with his cane. Oh, yeah, Quentin thought, dazed. Eliot had been stabbed. The thought hurt, so he turned away from it, gripping Eliot's hand and burying his face in the fall of Alice's hair. By that point he could barely stand up. When Penny brought them back to the penthouse where the Monster had kept him like a pet, he was too tired to feel much of anything. He wandered into the first bedroom he saw, flopped facedown on the bed, and passed out for twenty-seven hours.

He woke up the with Alice asleep next to him, and a feeling like a hand was slowly squeezing his ribs into nothing. It was such a _stupid_ thing to feel, Jesus. He was alive, it was incredible, he should be _better_ , he should — anyway, it sucked to be happy to be alive and panicky about nothing at the exact same time, so he pushed it away, turning on his side and touching his forehead to Alice's.

She was so — hot, he told himself. Lovely, too, all sorts of nice poetic words, but she was also just sex on legs. He remembered looking at her, while they were on the quest, in her short skirts with her ice princess attitude, and wanting to roll around on the floor at her feet until she made him stop. He tried to recapture that feeling now, and the tenderness he'd felt toward her the day that he died.

He couldn't.

Quentin shook his head, ruffling her hair where it tangled with his, and she opened her eyes and smiled at him.

And he _did_ love her, he did. He couldn’t feel it, but he would. He said, "Hey,"

Alice said, "Mmm, hi." He was just so glad he could be like this with her again. He leaned forward to kiss her, and she flinched back the tiniest bit. If he hadn't practically shoved their faces together, he wouldn't have even noticed. But he had, and he did.

He said, "Uh."

"Oh, shit," Alice said. "We should probably —"

"No, it's okay," Quentin said. He rolled over and sat up, and dragged a hand through his hair. The room was large and tidy and unfamiliar, and he thought a brief apology to whoever he had stolen it from. "I should, we should, yeah."

Alice was wearing a tank top and soft fuzzy pajama bottoms, looking clean and well-groomed and pink-cheeked like a doll, while Quentin was still in the same grotty hoodie and jeans he had (don't think about it) died in. He probably smelled disgusting. He definitely felt disgusting. "I'm gonna shower," he said, and left before she could answer.

In the bathroom, he couldn't stop noticing how strange and new everything felt. The light was too bright. The feeling of the water was excruciating. He tried not to wonder, as he scrubbed, what this body was made of. He had disintegrated, he had _felt_ it, so where had his new skin come from? He tapped a knuckle against his injured shoulder, and it was hollow wood. He had the same scars, the same twinge in his neck from his bad posture. Where had it all come from?

He turned up the hot water so he'd stop thinking about it.

When he came out of the shower he found his favorite sweater and his softest shirt and jeans folded up outside the bathroom door. The kindness of the gesture made that fist around his ribcage squeeze tighter. He shook his head, snapped his finger next to his ear like his last therapist had taught him, breathed in deep, and then went out to find his friends.

They were in the living room, all of them. Alice and Kady were squished together on the far edge of the sectional, looking at their phones and arguing. Alice glanced at him, looking troubled, but she didn't move. Penny was standing by the window with his arms crossed. Julia was on the other side of the sectional, close to Margo and —

And Eliot. Eliot.

Margo was draped against his chest like they were in a pinup spread. Eliot had his arm around her. They were both in bright colors, so different from when he'd seen them at the bonfi— from when they found him in the mirror world. Eliot looked tired and sad, and he stared at Quentin with a hunger that should have been uncomfortable but wasn't. He was still too handsome for Quentin to really wrap his head around, but now Quentin could let himself notice again, after months of shoving it down and hiding it from the Monst— anyway. The only thing that spoiled the picture of the two of them was Margo's scowl as she scrolled through her phone. That and the way Eliot's hand had spasmed on Margo's shoulder when Quentin came into the living room, and the way he'd swallowed, and the way he stared.

"Q," Julia said happily, and held her arms out like she had when they were kids. Quentin went and curled himself up as small as he could get, and burrowed into her side. Some part of him that he hadn't realized was in pain stopped hurting.

Eliot gave him a small, fragile-looking smile. "Welcome back," he said. "How are you feeling?"

Quentin said, "Fine. What's going on?"

Eliot and Alice looked at each other. She made a face, and Eliot raised his eyebrows. Kady rolled her eyes and went back to her phone. Um?

Eliot said, "Do you want some, I don't know. Coffee?" He sounded more awkward than usual. Or maybe Quentin's meter had gotten irreparably fucked by (don't, don't think about) dying.

Quentin frowned. "I said I'm fine." He ignored the way he was gripping Julia's sweater like a koala. "What are you all talking about?"

"O-kay," Eliot said. "You're — fine." He exchanged another look with Alice, what the hell? And then Eliot did that thing he did sometimes, that cat thing, where he pretended he'd meant to miss the cabinet when he jumped and actually, he _did_ mean to end up on the floor, and why were you asking? It was so obvious, Quentin almost smiled. "Good, then," Eliot said, voice light and breezy, tralala. Quentin had missed him so much.

Margo rolled her eyes. “Are we gonna get on with this?” she asked. “It won’t stop being Shaun of the Dead out there just because we want it to.”

“Shaun of the Dead?” Quentin asked, but — huh. Of course. Of course it wasn’t just him and Everett who'd come back. If he had been thinking at all, he would have thought of that. "How bad is it?" he asked. 

Margo said, "We don't know for sure, because nobody's talking. Maybe not bad at all, maybe apocalypse levels of bad."

Apocalypse sounded like a bit of an exaggeration. Quentin bumped his head against Julia's shoulder, and she resettled her arm around him. It felt so nice. Quentin thought maybe he could go back to sleep right there, and let everybody else get on with their worrying without him.

Alice said, "We've found thirty-seven cases so far, but there might be more. Articles keep disappearing as quickly as people write them." She was talking to Quentin, but she wouldn't look at him. He was so tired.

Kady said, "I've put anti-surveillance spells on everybody's phones. Somebody doesn't want anyone talking. And there's this." She tossed Quentin her phone, and he fumbled with it one-handed, not wanting to let go of Julia. On the screen was the President's twitter page.

He read, "'Dead not rising. Fake news. Liberal bias against afterlife.' This is seriously the only official word?"

Kady shrugged and motioned for her phone back. He handed it to Julia rather than risk breaking it in an awkward throw, and she shot it over to Kady with a gesture. "It's more press than we saw when the Beast was on his killing spree," Kady said.

Julia said, “Or when the Monster killed Shoshana and Iris in broad daylight.”

Those were — points.

Alice said, "Whatever the news is doing, we know it's not just Earth. Fen and Josh sent a bunny; it’s happening in Fillory, too. Zelda said it's happening in the Library."

Quentin was maybe a little slow on the uptake today, what with (don't) coming back to life and all, but he didn't see what the problem was. "Is thirty-seven a lot?" he asked.

Everybody kind of stared at each other. "Probably that's not a good number," Eliot said delicately.

"And it's getting worse," Alice said. "It was just nine people yesterday, before we went into the mirror world. Then it was like, like."

"All the topsy got turvier," Margo said. "And fast. El, show them."

"Show us what?" Kady asked suspiciously.

"Bambi," Eliot hissed, pushing her off his chest.

Margo turned and glared. "Eliot, I swear to fucking god —"

"Fine," he said, "fine. I guess I did need to take my exhibitionist tendencies out for a walk today." He unbuttoned his vest, then the bottom of his shirt, and showed them the smooth, unblemished skin of his belly.

"What the hell?" Kady asked.

"The mirror world ate it," Margo said. "He came out of there yesterday and that hole in his guts just didn't come with. I'm happy you're okay again, El, really, but I am so over that fucking place."

"Me, too," Eliot said, buttoning his shirt up again. He left his vest undone. Quentin pulled his gaze away from the buttons.

"And we think that's connected?" Penny asked. "That makes as much sense as anything else, which is to say, not a fucking bit."

Alice was frowning at Eliot, looking thoughtful. "It might be connected, or it might be something else."

"Great," Margo said. "So we have a clusterfuck of unknown proportions and unknown provenance, one that doesn't seem ready to stop anytime soon. How do we fix it?"

Quentin asked, "Who says it has to be us?"

He hadn't meant to say it, but he meant it. As soon as he said it, it was like someone flicked on the light switch inside of him, and he realized he was — angry, and sad that Alice wouldn't look at him, and desperate for Eliot to keep looking at him _like that_ , and freaked out about being able to breathe again, and angry, and angry, and angry. "This isn't something we did, this isn't something we got pulled into by — by the fucking Dean. Why does it have to be us?"

Nobody answered, and it made him angrier. He clamped down on that anger, tried to fold it up small. He said, "The answer is: it doesn't."

"Q," Julia said, her voice so kind he wanted to scream. He pulled away from her. "This isn't like you."

It certainly felt like him. Quentin said, "It was our responsibility to kill the Beast, it was our responsibility to bring magic back, it was our responsibility to stop Everett. And every time, people get hurt. Why can't we leave this one for somebody else?"

"Who else?" Kady asked.

"I don't know!" Quentin said, throwing his hands up. "Anybody! Not to mention, if you _do_ fix this, I'm dead again."

They all froze, looking at him with big wounded eyes, and he hated hurting them, but really? "Did nobody think of this?" He felt spacey, lightheaded. His heart was pounding and his hands shook. When had his hands started shaking?

"That won't happen," Eliot said.

Quentin would believe Eliot could do almost anything, but, "This isn't something you can stop, El." The anger drained out of him, suddenly, and took all his insides with it. He sagged against Julia, who gripped the hair at the back of his head tight, tight, tight, the way she hadn't since they were little kids. He wanted to go back to his stolen room again. He wanted to sleep for years. "From where I was standing," he said, "it felt pretty fucking final."

He couldn't see Eliot, with his face mushed into Julia's shoulder, but he heard the sound Eliot made, soft and wounded. He wanted to turn and burrow into Eliot's side instead, but he didn't. I'm sorry, he thought. Everyone started talking around them, and Quentin ignored it, closing his eyes. After a minute, he felt a hand on his foot — Eliot's big, warm hand covering his ankle, the curve of his heel. He stopped breathing, and had to remember how to start again.

He had thought, in the back of his mind, where he hid the things that hurt, that if Eliot touched him again, it would remind him of the Monster. It hadn’t happened in the mirror world, but he’d been a little distracted at the time, and a part of him had still wondered. It turned out that, even though they had the same hands, Eliot’s touch reminded him of _Eliot_. Suddenly he felt desperate to have Eliot’s hands all over him, overwriting every place the Monster had been. He wanted Eliot’s hands on his shoulder, the top of his head. He wanted Eliot’s hands on his _neck_ —

And Alice, his _girlfriend_ , still wasn’t looking at him. He tried to squash his feelings flat and shove them under a carpet.

"Uh, guys?" Julia said, cutting through the noise and Quentin’s thoughts. "Hey. I think I know why nobody's dying."

What?

Quentin frowned, and tipped his head up to look at her. She was staring off into space with her test-taking face on. It was the way she looked when she was zapping through idea after idea, relentless, until she found the right one. 

After a minute, Margo asked, "Are you gonna share with anyone?"

Julia said slowly, "Before I was possessed by the Monster's sister, I called for Our Lady Underground and she came. After, it's all a blank, but I think … I can feel it in my hands sometimes. I think they killed her."

Nobody spoke for a minute.

Then, "Well, that's not good," Margo said.

"How do you people keep doing this?" Penny asked, wide-eyed. "How do you all fuck it up so bad?"

"This might not be fixable,” Kady said. Quentin shut his eyes again. “If this is because of OLU, it might not stop."

"No," Eliot said, and there was something in his voice — "Listen to me,” he said. “This is a good thing."

“How can it possibly be a good thing?” Alice asked.

“It’s good that we know,” Eliot said. “Trust me.” Quentin sat up, and turned to look at him. And reckless, brilliant, lion-hearted Eliot looked back with shining eyes and the most amazing smile, and a face full of hope. "I promise, Q," Eliot said.

"Eliot," Margo said gently.

"No, just listen." Eliot didn't look away from Quentin, just kept watching him, still with that incredible smile. “We might be the only ones who know. Who else would be able to put it together?”

"What, uh. Why does that matter, if we can’t do anything about it?" Quentin asked, feeling the fragile beginnings of hope growing inside his heart. He wanted Eliot’s certainty, Eliot's smile. He wanted to devour them.

Eliot leaned forward and said, “It matters because it’s the gods. Humans can fuck themselves six ways to Sunday and nobody cares, but we know the gods build safety nets for themselves. And _we can find that safety net first_. We can figure out how to fix this.” The edge of his smile went sharp and dangerous. “And once we figure that out? Then we can bargain."

—-

They split up pretty quickly after. Julia and Penny went to Brakebills to talk to Henry, leaving Quentin curled up alone on his side of the couch, looking bereft. Eliot raised his eyebrows at Alice.

Alice cleared her throat and said, "Kady and I are going to talk to Zelda at the Library."

Kady squinted at her. "Yeah," she said slowly. "The Library. That place I love."

What the hell? Eliot scowled at her, and cut his eyes to Quentin, trying to convey, _What is your fucking problem, Alice_? with the power of his mind. She avoided his gaze, and Quentin's, and trotted out, stopping to press a brief kiss to the top of Quentin's head and making him look, if possible, even lonelier. Eliot was going to throw her out a window for making him look like that, for spiking her own damn happiness and leaving him _looking_ like that.

Then Margo made a little huffing sound. She said, gently, "Hey. Quentin."

Quentin glanced at them. He was still curled up with his knees against his chest. Eliot knew that pose. Q could say he was fine all he wanted, but his body never lied. "Hey, Margo," he said.

Margo opened her arms. "You wanna snuggle like a couple of virgins?"

Quentin smiled at her, tucking his nose behind his knees so only the top of his face was visible. "Yeah," Quentin said. "That sounds nice."

"Well?" Margo asked. She leaned against Eliot's chest again, tipped to the side so he had to brace her back against his arm, and waved imperiously. "Fucking bring it in."

Eliot would never get over her, never.

Quentin somehow moved over to their side of the couch without leaving his armadillo huddle, and curled against Margo's chest. Then it was the three of them, with Eliot holding them all up, and he was so grateful for it. He wrapped his arms around both of them as far as he could. Quentin sighed and practically melted into it, his hand coming to rest on Eliot's knee. Margo leaned her head back until it was cradled in the hollow of Eliot's throat. They sat there in the quiet for a long time.

After a while, Quentin's breath evened out and he started making those odd little mini-snores that Eliot remembered, and Margo sighed and said, "El."

Eliot said, "You want your kingdom back."

"I want my kingdom _back_ , El." Her voice shook.

One of Eliot's hands was resting on Quentin's back, and he was probably never moving it again, but he brought the other one up to Margo's face and ran the backs of his fingers over her cheek.

"I miss it. The talking animals and the shitty politics and the lack of central heating."

"The toothbrushes made of twigs," Eliot said.

"Having to shit down a hole," Margo said.

"No champagne," Eliot said.

"No _scotch_ ," Margo said.

"No divorce," Eliot said.

"No public education," Margo said. "No tampons. No Netflix. But."

"But," Eliot agreed. "And then there's Hoberman. I'm impressed at your creative thinking." Her whole frame shuddered in a silent laugh. "Was it as weird as you hoped it would be?"

Margo leaned her face into his hand. "You know the way it is," she said, dreamy, wondering. "Your first time with somebody, after you realize you love them? Where it's still banging, but it's also more than that?"

Eliot swallowed. "Yeah," he said. "I'm familiar."

Margo turned her head and kissed the palm of his hand. She said, "It was like that the very first time, with him."

Eliot was familiar with that, too. Even that first time with Quentin, when he'd been drunk, and still horribly in love with the person who hadn't been Mike, and terrified and grieving and hating himself, just hating himself — even that first time, Eliot had been shocked by it. How his small, kind, awkward friend could light a fire inside of him that made his hands shake and his breathing go ragged. He had thought, _I want to ruin you for anybody else_ , and it was only years later, when they were trapped with each other at the mosaic and he was so so so glad to be there, that he realized what it meant.

His fingers spasmed, and Margo kissed the backs of them. "Yeah," he said, after a minute. "It's always the ones you don't expect."

Margo snorted. "I had no idea," she said. "Who would've! I just thought he was some kind of secret porn star or something."

Eliot said, "I'd believe it." It wouldn't be the strangest thing he knew about that man.

"But it was him," Margo said. "He fits me. Fillory fits me. Do you know" she said, halfway between exasperated and fond, "Coldwater had to go lecture some flower garden on what he loved about Fillory, and all he could say was that he wished it was more like the books? I loved those books, don't get me wrong. But the real thing…"

Eliot thought he understood. Fillory in the books wasn't a place to Quentin. It was the hope of transformation. Fillory in real life was real life turned up to 11. When real life was good, Fillory was even better, but when real life hurt — well. He said, "So we'll go and get you your kingdom back."

Margo didn't say anything for a minute. Her grip on his fingers tightened.

"Bambi?" Eliot asked.

She shook her head. "I don't want to take it away from Fen. She's so good for them, Eliot. I wish you could have seen her."

Now, this was unexpected. "What are you telling me?" he asked carefully.

"I don't know," Margo said, grumpy. "It's bad enough I caught feelings for one person. Now I have to figure out if I have feelings for two?"

Eliot grinned. He loved her spikes. He loved poking them. "If you have to ask," he said, sing-song. Margo bit the side of his wrist, hard enough to hurt. "Jesus, Bambi."

"This is serious!" Margo said. "What am I going to do?"

He shrugged, jostling her and Quentin. Quentin made a little confused sound that cut right through Eliot's chest, and he rubbed Quentin's back in apology. He said, "We go, we get you un-banished, you and your man get yourselves a piece of that High King. What's the conundrum?"

Margo shrugged. He felt her chin tremble a little against his fingers, and pressed a kiss to the back of her head. "El," she said. "I —"

Then a bunny dropped out of nowhere onto the coffee table. "Quentin! Come to Library!" it said. Goddammit. "Quentin! Come to Library!"

Quentin sat bolt upright, his hair sticking every which way, his eyes still closed. "What," he said. He tried to rub his face and missed. "Where?"

"No," Eliot said. Quentin looked over at him, squinting, still half-asleep, and Eliot wasn't strong enough for this. "Whatever they want, they can come here."

"It's probably Alice," Quentin said. It probably was, and she probably had a good reason for it, and Eliot absolutely did not care.

"Then she can _come here_ ," Eliot said, "where you are _recovering_."

Quentin focused on Eliot, losing the groggy squint. He ran a hand through his hair, and said, "Okay," voice mild, the way he got when he _knew_ Eliot was just at the end of his fucking rope. "I'll tell them to come here."

Eliot hadn't realized how tense he was, until he relaxed all at once. "Okay," he said. He wrapped both his arms around Margo again.

Quentin picked up the bunny, and then frowned. "It's got something around its neck," he said. The bunny did: a little tin card catalog trinket, hanging from a chain. "That's weird —" then he touched it, and vanished.

—-

Quentin landed in a crouch, his arms still around the bunny, and it was such a surprise that he lost his balance and fell over.

"Quentin!" he heard Alice say. Well, he was right about that part, at least. He sat up, and watched the bunny hop across the floor to a dish filled with radishes. Then he braced himself and looked around.

The Library wasn't actually tilted thirty-seven degrees to the left, it just felt that way. There was something in the air, or some trick of the light, something that made him feel like his brain was backwards or upside down. It had been odd and uncomfortable before he died, but now it was nearly unbearable. And Eliot was back on Earth, not here, and Quentin just — it had been less than two minutes, and Quentin already missed him. He felt the fist squeezing his ribcage again.

Alice came over and looked at him for a second, her hand twitching against her skirt, and then she reached down and helped him up. As soon as he felt the touch of her fingers, the grip on his ribs eased again. Then Alice gave him an uncomfortable grimace-smile and extricated her hand. Quentin honestly had no fucking idea what was happening, but he hated it. "Uh, hi, Alice," he said.

"How are you?" she asked.

How could he even begin to answer that? "I'm fine," he said.

Behind Alice, he could see Kady standing with Harriet and Zelda, the three of them arguing in sign language and looking furious. The room itself was filled with books and furniture and an ominous-looking pile of surgical tools, but it still felt kind of like nothing. There was a small table next to him with a pile of card catalog trinkets on it — and in the corner, far away from the rest of them, was a woman all in black. Looking at her made Quentin want to run.

"Quentin, Suzanne is going to check you over," Alice said, waving at the woman in black.

"No?" he said before he could stop himself. He shook his head. "Sorry, just. Why?"

Alice bit her lip. "She's a corpse eater. She's been checking the formerly-dead Librarians, seeing if she can sniff out anything that might help us figure out what to do next."

"As in, she's going to eat me, a former corpse?" Talking about his death was getting easier, that was nice. Nothing else about any of this was, so.

"No," Alice said. "As in, she is _not going to touch you_ ," this was loudly directed to Suzanne, "while she runs some diagnostic tests."

And that. Made as much sense as anything else. He still wanted to run, but he said, "Okay," and let Alice lead him over to the counter, near the pile of surgical tools. He thought he saw a couple of retractors, and a tenaculum. He wished fiercely that he was back at Kady's penthouse, sitting between Margo and Eliot and being cuddled with extreme prejudice. He wished Alice would look at him the way she had before he (don’t don’t don—) died.

Suzanne came over to them. She was a little shorter than Alice and thin as a sheet of paper, with sand-colored hair scraped tightly back from her face. There was — something wrong with her mouth. And her eyes. Were corpse eaters even human? Why hadn't he ever asked anyone before this?

Alice said, "She's just going to, well, smell you."

"Smell me," Quentin said.

Suzanne smiled. Her lips peeled back from her teeth and kept going, her jaws opening, and inside her mouth he could see nothing but row after row of white teeth, with white gums and a bone-white tongue, and a dark red circle at the back of her throat like a pool of blood. Quentin took a step back and ran into the counter. He squeezed his eyes shut. 

He heard a deep breath in, dry and crackly like a death rattle, and then a delicate sneeze. "Excuse me," the Suzanne said, sounding prim. She had an accent like David Attenborough, her voice as thin and papery as she was, and when he squinted open one eye she was watching him with raised eyebrows, looking unimpressed. She said, "He smells like gods."

Quentin shrugged. "Which one?" Suzanne could take her pick.

Alice frowned. "Nothing else?"

Suzanne shook her head. She picked her front teeth with a fingernail. Her horrible white tongue came out, out, out and waved in the air like a snake's, and then she said, "Death, of course, like you and your delicious friend Cyrus." Alice looked scandalized. Who the hell was Cyrus? "He smells like the Underworld had him and lost him. Are you sure there isn't a little something around here I can nibble on?"

"I'll see what I can do," Alice said, with a remarkable poker face. "Thank you."

Suzanne shrugged, and wandered over to the table of surgical tools. She picked up — that _was_ a tenaculum. Quentin really regretted the three months in high school when he'd wanted to become an obstetrician. Suzanne held the tenaculum up to the light, and tilted it.

"Can we, uh. Go somewhere else?" Quentin asked. "Anywhere else? I think you wanted to talk this morning."

Alice looked so sad, just for a moment, before her expression went blank and she nodded. She led him through a door to another odd, sideways nothing-room, this one filled with a massive desk and bookshelf combo that was so drab he almost didn't notice it. Quentin fucking hated this place. It wasn't too loud or too bright, like the rest of the world, but it made up for that by being exactly as dull and sad and poisonous as Everett, or his own thoughts.

Quentin shook his head, and looked at Alice. With her pale hair and her black coat, she fit in here perfectly. He asked, "What's going on?"

Alice looked away.

"Come on, Alice." The fist squeezed, squeezed, squeezed his chest. He wished she would hold him. He wished he could go home. "You can't even look at me. Whatever it is, please just fucking say it out loud."

Alice took a deep breath, looking like she was about to cry.

Quentin asked, "Should I. Not have come back?" His voice was too small. He wished he could take it back as soon as he said it.

"What?" Alice stared at him, looking shocked. "Jesus, _no_ , Quentin. How can you ask me that?"

Quentin shrugged, and stuck his hands in his jeans pockets, turning in a circle so he could escape from Alice's sad eyes. "I don't know what I'm supposed to think."

He heard her sigh, that awful disappointed sound she made when he wasn't good enough. Then she said, "It was horrible, for me. Watching you die."

Oh, he thought. He turned to look at her.

Alice gave him a watery smile. "I spent a lot of time talking with Eliot, about how hard it was. He's pretty great," she said.

"Yeah, I know," Quentin said. What?

Alice said, "But it didn't help. Losing you was so hard. And now you're back, and that’s hard, too, because." She took a breath and wiped her eyes. "Because watching you die changed me. I didn’t realize, not until yesterday, but it’s true.”

Quentin asked, "How?" But then he knew. He felt it like the drop on a roller coaster, except it kept going down and down. He’d felt this before, and he knew that when the impact came, it would be awful.

Alice said, "I was ready to try again, before. I was ready to love you. I wanted it. And now." She looked away. "Now I don't."

And there was the impact. Quentin said, "Okay."

Alice said, "I _do_ love you. You're one of the best things that ever happened to me." Quentin flinched. She couldn't remember saying that to him before, and somehow that felt worse. "But. When I died, your feelings for me didn't change, did they?"

"No," Quentin said. His feelings never changed, unless he yanked them screaming into a vault. It was everybody else who seemed to change as easy as breathing.

"Mine did," Alice said. "And you died, and your feelings for me didn't change."

"No," Quentin said, voice cracking.

"Mine did," Alice said. "I'm sorry."

Quentin didn't answer. He looked at the bookshelf, the desk. There was a book on the desk that was misaligned with the corner, and he itched to put it straight. He cleared his throat. "Okay," he said again. He didn't bother trying not to cry. What the fuck was the point?

"I still want you in my life," Alice said. "I still care about you so much. If you want that."

"I should go," Quentin said.

"Q —"

"No, just," Quentin walked past her toward the door. "I'm just really fucking sick of the people I love telling me I'm not good enough, and then wanting to keep me around anyway."

"That's not the way it is," Alice said. "Eliot —"

"You don’t get to talk to me about Eliot," Quentin said, rounding on her. How fucking dare she — he'd gotten _better_ , he'd put those feelings _away_ , or he wouldn’t have asked her to try again. He put them away after that day in the throne room, he put them away after that day in the park, he hid them from the Monster every fucking minute, and it had hurt so much but he'd done it. And he loved her, he never lied about that. Not once.

Alice said, "Wait, Q," but then Quentin was through the door and he didn't have to _listen_ to her anymore.

In the other room, Suzanne was sorting the surgical tools, and Kady had progressed to yelling. "No wonder Everett came out of this place," she said, looking ready to skin someone. "You can talk all you want about how it's going to be different, but you're exactly the same, with your elitism and your rules."

"If this experience with Everett taught us anything," Zelda said, "It's that knowledge in the wrong hands is dangerous —"

"Really? Because what it taught _me_ was that Librarians are dangerous."

Harriet signed something. She looked as angry as Kady, and she looked tired.

"Exactly!" Kady said. "Hoarding knowledge because you think you're better just hurts people. My friend _died_ because you couldn't police your own. Hedges handle our shit every damn day. We make do with _nothing_. And you won't even consider —"

"I'll consider it," Zelda said. "Maybe a hundred preliminary Library cards, for people you trust?" 

Kady sneered. "Consider this, then. Which of us almost destroyed the world, huh? Because it wasn't hedges." 

She turned and saw Quentin. Her anger didn't disappear, but it was as if, instead of turning it on him, she tucked him safely behind it like it was a shield. "You're done?" she asked. "Good. We're leaving." She stalked up to him and grabbed his hand, and he felt so pathetically grateful for the touch. "Alice?" she asked him, voice quiet. 

"No," he said. 

She nodded, and pulled him over to the table of card catalog trinkets, and reached for one. 

"Kady —" Zelda said. Then Kady's hand touched the trinket and they disappeared. 

—- 

Eliot had been smoking on the balcony for the last hour, until even Margo got sick of him and left to order pizza. It had gotten dark, and the West Village was lit up bright with street lamps, neon diner signs, office block fluorescents, and the floodlights over on the High Line. He still noticed when Quentin and Kady got back, though. How could he not? Kady was muttering to herself about retrofuturist authoritarian sociopaths, and Quentin was jittering so hard Eliot could practically feel the balcony shaking. Quentin stared when Eliot came in, wide-eyed and miserable-looking. He said, "Thank god," and came over and stole Eliot's half-smoked cigarette. Eliot didn't watch his mouth for more than a couple of seconds. 

Kady asked, "What happened back there?" 

Quentin shook his head. "Can we talk about, I don't know. Anything else?" Eliot loved when he talked around a cigarette. "Tell me a happy story about happy things." 

Eliot said, "All my stories are depressing as hell." Quentin's face fell. Behind him, at the kitchen island, Eliot could see Margo glaring at him. "But we can go on a field trip," Eliot tried, thinking fast. 

Quentin looked confused. "A what?" 

Bless. "Come on, get your jacket." The more he thought about it, the better an idea it was. "Let's take a walk." 

Quentin said, quietly, "El, the outside world is kind of overwhelming right now." 

Like Eliot hadn't noticed. "I got it. This will be good. Come on." He made gathering motions with his arm, and then held out his elbow like a Victorian gentleman. 

Quentin started to smile, his face losing that pinched, unhappy look. He glanced at Kady, who shrugged and said, "Give me that cigarette before you go." 

Quentin gave it to her, and then he tucked his hand into Eliot's elbow. They'd never done that before, in this timeline or any other that Eliot remembered, and it gave him a thrill down to his toes to be doing it now. "Wait," Eliot said. "First —" He accio'd a pair of earplugs and his favorite sunglasses. "For you." 

Quentin looked at them, and then looked at Eliot, and the smile on his face was incredible. Eliot had told Quentin, once, that the only reason he ever did anything nice was so Quentin would give him that 'Take me now' look he handed out as easily as other people said thank you. Quentin obviously didn't remember that, or he would have had some words about Eliot's behavior tonight. But whatever, life was horrible, best to find joy where you could. "Thanks," Quentin said softly. He put the earplugs in, and put on the sunglasses. "I look like a Columbia frat bro." 

"You just had an eye exam and your pupils are dilated," Eliot said, sweeping them out of the penthouse. "Or you have post-concussion syndrome. Who are they to judge? Just, uh, maybe walk tilted a little sideways, hmm? Sell it a little." 

And Quentin (god, he had missed it so much) laughed. 

Their building was smack in the middle of the West Village, near the square where the Crazy Piano Guy played sometimes, and in easy distance of the Stonewall. It wasn't the tallest around, not with Union Square close at hand. It wasn't the fanciest, either. But it was free, and in the fucking Village, and Eliot would take shameless advantage until the Baba Yaga kicked them all out. He pulled Quentin down a quiet side street, dodging the occasional hipster undergrad, and when Quentin realized where they were going and gave him a look, he just shrugged. 

Washington Square Park, when they got there, was more crowded than he had hoped, but not nearly as packed as he had feared. Nobody seemed to notice that the apocalypse was coming. There were teenagers drawing in chalk under the Arch, and skateboarders zooming along the paths. And — there, under the statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Loose Marbles were playing jazz. 

Eliot had lived in New York City for about a year after he graduated from SUNY Purchase, scrounging a gig as a bartender at a dive in Alphabet City. He'd wandered around that neighborhood in circles for the first few weeks, trying to feel like Basquiat, and then he'd shrugged and headed over to the Village, and found a little pocket of New Orleans jazz in the middle of the city. 

Tonight it wasn't the full 30-piece band, only a quintet, but the dancers Jimmy and Miranda were there, swinging like there was no tomorrow. Eliot hadn't been to this park in years, not since he got the letter from Brakebills and rocketed upstate so fast you could still see the smoke trail. But he remembered late spring evenings like this one, surrounded by people and sound, the air soft and dim and the smell of the city almost drowned out by the smell of flowers. He watched Quentin taking it in, the brass, the dancing, the joy of it, and he wanted to wrap his arms around Quentin and sway them to the music. Suddenly he wanted it so much it hurt. 

He shouldn't have come here. This was too much of his history to give anyone, even his dearest friend. It felt too much like a date, it was too close to the heart of him. It was too much. 

Then Quentin looked at him and smiled, huge, his eyebrows raised behind Eliot's sunglasses. And of course Eliot was right to bring him here. Of course. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot meets a new acquaintance. Quentin hears a story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My personal headcanon is that Eliot has dyslexia. This chapter makes a very brief mention of that.

Jazz was amazing, swing dance was _amazing_ , everything was amazing. Quentin spent the walk home looking stuff up on his phone, while Eliot pulled him out of the way of dogs and pedestrians. "So, uh, so there are a ton of different styles of swing dance, apparently, and a lot of them came from this place called the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem," he said.

"Uh huh," Eliot said, directing him around — oh, that was a couple of garbage bags in the middle of the sidewalk.

Quentin forgot them after a second, squinting at his phone. He hadn't taken the sunglasses off, and he had to turn up the brightness on his screen to be able to read the Wikipedia entries. "And there are competitions all over the world, like, today. Balboa, jitterbug, boogie woogie — these are great names."

"They are," Eliot said. Quentin didn't have to look to know he was smiling. The earplugs blocked out the ambient noise to a degree that was nearly blissful, but he could still hear Eliot just fine.

"Eliot,” he said, “the entire classification system is based on how you move your feet. And the dance they were doing back in the park —"

"Lindy hop," Eliot said, steering him over a massive crack in the pavement. "Eight count. Look up, hmmm, the International Lindy Hop Championships, if you want videos. I'm amazed I remember that."

"How did you —" Quentin looked up from his phone, and hey, they were stopped at a crosswalk. "How much do you —"

Eliot shrugged. "Jimmy and I had a thing for a couple of weeks, before I left for Brakebills."

Quentin asked, "Did he teach you to dance?"

Eliot gave him that look, his absolute favorite look in the entire world, the one that made him feel adored down to his bones with no exceptions and no caveats. Quentin could never get those looks when he was trying, he only ever got them by accident, and he hoarded his memories of them like a dragon hoarding treasure. They hadn't stopped after that day in the throne room, either, and it meant to world to him. _See_? he would tell himself over and over, _You can make people happy. You make this incredible man so happy_.

Eliot said, "I didn't ask him, which I'm thinking now was a slight oversight." He was teasing Quentin, but gently, in that way he did where they were both in on the joke, and the joke wasn't that Quentin was weird, but that life was weird.

Then Eliot said, "Hey." They were still at the crosswalk. Angry college students shoved past them, but Quentin didn't move and neither did Eliot.

"Hey," Quentin said.

Eliot said, "I'm really glad you're back. I missed you."

And Quentin had — nothing, just absolutely no defenses against that. He'd shut the door on his feelings so many times, but he couldn't lock it, he didn't know how, and it kept slamming back open again. Quentin looked at Eliot's beautiful face, his soft smile and the way his hair fell over his forehead. Okay, he thought, feeling love well up inside of him until it spilled over the sides. Okay, yeah, you win.

"I missed you, too," Quentin said. It was the most honest thing he'd allowed himself to say in months.

They were still looking at each other, standing in the way of all the pedestrians in the West Village, when a taxi cab came barreling through the crosswalk and hit a man. Quentin and Eliot both jumped.

"Jesus," Eliot said. His hand on Quentin's arm tightened.

The taxi ground to a stop in the middle of the traffic box, and immediately a wave of honks and angry yelling rose up. The man who'd been hit had rolled off the side of the hood and lay crumpled and bleeding in the crosswalk, and then suddenly he was awake and completely healthy, still covered in blood and clearly spitting mad. He marched over to the taxi cab and leaned in the driver side window, and started screaming at the driver. The honking around them got louder, until even Quentin's earplugs couldn't make it bearable. He looked at Eliot.

Eliot made a face at him. "Intermission over, I guess," he said. "Come on, let's get back."

“Okay.” Quentin stuck his phone in his pocket, feeling wilted. He let Eliot lead him back to their building.

—-

The closer they got to the penthouse, the more hunched Quentin got, so that by the time they arrived he was practically folded in half. Eliot stopped him outside the door and looked him over. Quentin's hair wasn't long enough to hide behind, but oh boy he tried.

Eliot took Quentin's sunglasses off. He put his hands on Quentin's shoulders, and then straightened his collar and his sleeves, and smoothed his hair down. He loved that Quentin let him fuss like this, let him care like this. Quentin didn't have to; grown men mostly didn't like other grown men to tell them how to wear their shirts. Eliot had had to apologize to several boyfriends in the past for being too much.

But Quentin just — let him. Quentin seemed to like it, even more than Eliot remembered him liking it before. He almost glowed. It was an incredible feeling, and it satisfied something deep inside of Eliot, to be able to put fingerprints all over him, and know that Quentin was going out into the world with a little more protection because of Eliot and no one else.

"Let's figure this thing out and then kick its ass," he said.

Quentin smiled. Eliot loved that, too. They went inside.

The living room was empty, and so was the rest of the downstairs when he looked around — except Alice was standing at the kitchen island, holding a book and staring at them. Quentin froze, his hand on Eliot’s arm going still, and then he said, "I’m gonna go find Julia," in this horrible, calm, empty voice, and walked away.

Eliot was torn between following to _make sure_ that he got to Julia, finding Margo to curl up around her and try to sleep, and staying to figure out what the fuck was going on. He stood there looking between the trashy spiral staircase Quentin had escaped up and Alice’s sad face in the kitchen, until he heard Julia’s voice say, "Hey, Q. Did I show you my new card trick?"

Well, then. Margo would still be there if he took his time. Figuring it out, it was.

Eliot went into the kitchen. "How much alcohol am I going to need for this conversation?" he asked.

"I broke up with him," Alice said.

"Oh," said Eliot faintly. "That much." He felt something bright and joyous in his belly, behind where his ax wound used to be. For a second he wished, desperately, that Margo was there. He shoved his feelings down, hard, and kicked a blanket over them so they wouldn't show.

Alice thumped a new bottle of vodka onto the kitchen island.

"Please," Eliot said. "Daddy can drink now, let’s have a little class." He went fishing for the Lagavulin Distiller’s Edition he’d hidden away behind that disgusting rainbow cereal the day after he got out of the Brakebills infirmary.

He poured a finger for her and three fingers for himself, and sipped. Jesus, he had missed this.

"Eliot, just say it," Alice said, sounding miserable.

"All of it?" Eliot asked, and whoops, there were those feelings again. He drank more. "I have a list."

Alice sighed and slammed back the whisky. She reached for the bottle and Eliot grabbed it out of her hands. "Shit, no. If you’re going to treat it like that, have the damn vodka."

Alice glared at him, and proceeded to pour herself the angriest tumbler of vodka Eliot had seen since he left home. She was so tiny, and she’d become so comfortable and familiar to him in the last week (how did that happen?) that he almost smiled at her. "Give me your list, then."

Eliot held up his whisky, and used the glass to list off items on his fingers. "One. Are you stupid. Two, what did you _say_ to him? Three, why would you throw away the best thing in your whole life like you’re _me_ —"

"I thought you’d be happy," Alice said. She didn’t say it like she thought he was a homewrecker, and she wasn’t wrong, but it still stung.

"Alice," he said. "Q’s alive. Of course I’m happy."

Her expression twisted, and she shoved her jaw out and tilted her head the way he’d seen her do every night since the memorial. It was the look she got right before she cried. He remembered, dimly, seeing her cry when they were at Brakebills. He’d _made_ her cry when they were at Brakebills. It had seemed to come so easily to her, before, and now she fought it every second. He felt a swell of affection for her, even while he wanted to bonk her on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, and while the biggest part of him wanted to dart up the stairs and throw himself at Quentin’s feet right that very second.

"Don’t get me wrong," he said. "I absolutely want to Indecent Proposal this, pile of money on the bed and everything."

Alice squinted at him.

"Nevermind," he said, waving his glass at her. Kids these days. "Before your time, it's fine. Robert Redford is masterful and he throws a lot of cash around, it's very me."

Alice’s face relaxed, and she gave him the ghost of a smile.

"The point is," Eliot said, "I am tempted. And I can’t believe I’m asking this, but Alice, are you sure?"

Alice poured herself more vodka and drank it all in one go. "I don’t know," she said.

Ah, Eliot thought. He hadn’t really, actually believed. But somehow having the possibility taken away still hurt.

Alice said, "I love him so much. You have to want to be with somebody, if you love them that much, right? Eliot, I killed for him."

"You did, and it was fucking magnificent." It had been, too. Maybe that made him a bad person, but he didn’t care.

Alice said, “I keep thinking, though. Because,” she looked at him, “Margo would do the same for you. And that feels — I think that's what I want, instead.”

And then he had that bright, joyous feeling inside him again, filling him up until he glowed. Maybe, he thought. If Quentin still loved him, or wanted to love him again. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

—-

Julia had figured out how to levitate a house of cards, like the one he’d made for his entrance exam. It had four turrets and a drawbridge that went up and down, so it was actually more like a castle. When he pointed that out to her, she waved her hands and made Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, with the giant tree next to it and everything.

"Wow," Quentin said. "That’s pretty great. How did you get your magic back?"

Julia’s hands twitched, and the cards went flying all over the room. One of them tore straight through the lampshade.

"Uh, so, that’s a thing that magic is doing, these days," she said. She avoided his eyes.

Quentin hadn’t done any magic since he’d gotten out of the mirror world. He hadn’t even thought about it. He raised his hands to cast, and then lowered them. "That’s really wild," he said instead. "I still don’t get how it happened, though."

Julia shook her head. "I don’t know, it’s another mystery. Look, do you, uh, do you want to talk about it?"

She meant Alice, but when Quentin said, "No," he meant all of it. He didn’t want to talk about Alice and the ache of losing her again, or the feeling of love for Eliot that was familiar and new and uncontrollable. He didn’t want to talk about the numb misery he’d felt for weeks before he died, or the excruciating, painful hope he’d felt before that, when he knew Eliot was alive. He didn’t want to talk about dying. He said, "I’m just really tired."

"Great, me too," Julia said. "Let me get on some sweats and we’ll crash."

And that was — "Uh, you’re sleeping here?" But as soon as he asked, he remembered: Alice, Kady, Margo, Eliot. He hadn’t been left alone once since they got him back. "Did you put a twenty-four hour watch on me?"

Julia said gently, "Q. Of course I did."

It hurt, but it was also such a goddamn relief that he couldn’t keep it out of his face when he said, "Okay." Something inside of him relaxed. He didn’t have to fight this part of himself alone, not now.

He cleared his throat. "You’re taking the left side," he said, remembering the fights they’d had as kids.

"I hate the left side," Julia said, scowling. Then she grinned at him, a lopsided, wry, entirely human grin, and picked up a pillow with a wave of her fingers, and whapped it into his chest. Quentin was so lucky to have her.

—-

In the morning, they all made a field trip to the Library.

"Uh, Eliot’s been banned," Quentin said at breakfast. Margo had gone out and gotten breakfast burritos for everyone, because she was better than they all deserved, while Eliot had trailed along as her incredibly stylish pack mule. Quentin picked at his in a way that had Eliot worried, but he couldn't figure out a way to fuss from down the length of the table.

Alice said, "I got him un-banned yesterday."

Eliot said, "Thank you, kitten," without really thinking about it. But then Alice went pink, and she got this look on her face like she was embarrassed at how much she liked it. It was exactly how Fray had looked when he’d given his blessing about Humbledrum, and now he was _definitely_ going to think about that.

Penny said, "It makes sense. We didn't find anything at the Brakebills library yesterday, and Dean Fogg had no leads. This looks like the next place to go."

"Great," Kady said, voice flat. "Just nobody go signing any contracts, okay?" She poured an obscene amount of Cholula on her burrito, and then took a bite so big that Eliot’s face hurt, watching her.

Julia crunched a tortilla chip. "How bad is the outside world today?"

Kady said, "I renewed the anti-surveillance spells this morning, so we should be good to use our phones."

Margo unlocked her phone with great fanfare and read, "'Plot against Christianity by Classics-reading liberals. Hades equals total fake.' Oh, and here he's accusing Senators of witchcraft."

That was. Not great, but not the absolute worst. Eliot said, "Points for creativity?"

Penny raised his eyebrows, incredulous, and opened his mouth, and then a bunny dropped onto the middle of the table with its front paw in the bowl of guacamole.

"Dammit," Penny said.

"Fighting! Fillory! Inheritance problems!" the bunny said. "Fighting! Fillory! Inheritance problems."

Margo said, "Shit. That's our cue. Come on, assholes, let's fix this shit." She rubbed the bunny's ears and then handed it to Quentin to wipe its paw off, and they all went to get their shoes.

The last time — the only time — that Eliot had been in the Library, he'd been fucked up and scared for his life, and high and angry and sad. He'd also felt a tremendous hunger to kiss his odd, sweet friend just one more time, just one, and he'd been busy hating himself for it. Not a good headspace for research, that. He had thought at the time that the miserable vertigo he felt there was him being him. But no, apparently the Library was just awful.

"What the fuck," he said faintly, when they arrived. He gripped Margo’s hand, and she huddled close.

"What kind of fucked up Matrix shit is this?" she asked.

"You get used to it," Alice said, starting off down the (awful) hallway.

"No, you don’t," Kady told them, and followed.

They were led to an awful conference room and given awful water and descended upon with awful books. The whole thing made Eliot want to claw his own skin off.

Alice’s friend Sheila had assigned them a couple of lackeys, who fetched more books and gave them sad eyes when they asked for coffee. They were cute but they were also _everywhere_ , and it didn't help that with every book Eliot looked at, the letters started dancing on the page like he thought he'd managed to deal with back in undergrad. Even wrapping himself around Margo as she read didn't help the restless itchiness, and he wouldn't even let himself look at Quentin.

So, in the absence of entertainment, usefulness, or peace and comfort, Eliot assigned himself an incredibly important project.

"Hello there," he said to Lackey 1, an adorable baby queer in herringbone. He’d managed to corner her outside the door to the research room, where hopefully nobody would hear him. "What sort of books do you have on swing dancing?"

She squinted at him. "Every book? Can you narrow down what you're looking for?"

Eliot said, "Find me something with lindy hop, math and statistics."

She grinned. "Come see our card catalog," she said.

The catalog wasn't nearly as sexy as he'd hoped, given Lackey 1's serious crush on it, but it was impressive. "How many floors does this thing go for?" he asked, looking up. His voice echoed weirdly. The vertigo of the room was comforting: at least this place was _supposed_ to feel awful. The rest of the Library looked like the basement of a Hyatt Regency and felt like what would happen if you dipped your senses in turpentine and mineral spirits and then lit them on fire.

Lackey 1 sighed, dreamy. "Seven thousand," she said.

"That's — very impressive," Eliot said. "Now about my books."

Lackey 1 was named Darla, and along with her feelings about the card catalog, she also had a painful crush on Sheila The Boss. She'd grown up in Minnesota ("I am, from the bottom of heart, truly sorry," Eliot said) and she'd stumbled onto the Library by accident in her first semester at Brakebills, and once she realized what it was she refused to leave. Eliot hummed as he watched her dig through the drawers of cards, and marveled at how many different kinds of people there were in the multiverse.

They found three books. Two of them hadn't technically been written ("How does that work?" Eliot asked, staring at them. They certainly _looked_ real enough.

Darla shrugged. "We're in the Dreams and Musings division. If somebody’s thought about it, we have a record."

Eliot spared a thought for all the elaborate, extensive sexual fantasies he'd had about: his little league coach, his dentist, the Fillorian palace guards, random peasantfolk he'd met while he was making his manure tour of Fillory, the traffic cop he'd seen yesterday, every twink he'd ever flirted with at a club, and his sort-of-not-really former life partner slash best friend. He wondered if they each had their own book, or if the Dreams and Musings division had bundled them all together as the Eliot Waugh Erotica Anthology. Quentin probably had a couple of books.

"Huh," he said.)

and one of them was an unpublished Master's thesis. Darla said, "Normally we don't let people touch them if they don't have a Library card, but Alice vouched for all of you. As long as you keep them in the research room it shouldn't be a problem."

Eliot gathered his trophies and motioned Darla ahead of him, back toward the research room. The hallway was slightly less awful now that he had a carnival prize, but it still bowed and stretched in his mind, and it almost wasn't a surprise when the creepiest woman he had ever seen in his life stepped out from between the stacks.

"Well, hello, my darling," she said to Eliot. She was all in black, and there was something wrong with her mouth.

"Hel-lo," Eliot said carefully.

"Oh, hi, Suzanne," Darla said, unenthused. She didn't sound scared, which was a good sign — but then, Librarians regularly visited something called the poison world for kicks, so he didn't think he was going to completely trust Darla's judgment here.

Suzanne's smile got bigger, and there was something _really_ wrong with her mouth. Eliot took a step back. Suzanne said, "You are _very_ interesting."

"I'm really not," Eliot said. He took another step back. Suzanne couldn’t have been more than five feet, two inches, but somehow she made Eliot feel small and hunted.

Suzanne's smile got impossibly big, her lips peeling back to uncover white, white, white inside her mouth, and what looked like a ball of blood-soaked hair on her tongue. She breathed in — it felt like everything in that awful Library breathed in. And then her lips folded back over her million teeth, thank _god_ , and she said, "You smell like the titans. The first gods."

"Oh. That," Eliot said, aiming for nonchalant and missing. "That was just your average case of god-possession. NBD."

Darla said, "Suzanne," scolding.

"What?" Suzanne said. "I didn't touch him."

"You cannot go around terrorizing the guests. I'll tell Alice."

Suzanne sighed. For a moment, she looked as dreamy as Darla with her card catalog. "That woman is going to be the death of me," she said, adoring. "I can just tell."

"Uh, congratulations," Eliot said. "Wishing you many happy returns." He tried to sidle crabwise past her, and froze when she turned to look at him.

Suzanne's eyes were almost as wrong as her mouth. She said, "Maybe I'll ask Alice if I can come see you again," she said. "You have such pain inside you. Fear, and loneliness, and the smell of all the deaths you’ve caused. It’s delicious. When you die, you will be quite the feast."

But I’m fine, Eliot thought.

Then the rest of it caught up with him. "When I what?" he asked.

Darla leaned over and said in a stage whisper, "Suzanne is the Library's corpse eater."

Suzanne grinned her horrible, bone-white grin. "Charmed," she said. She held out her hand, palm-down like a duchess waiting for a kiss. Eliot stared at it. He was fine — he wasn't — he put a hand on his belly, where the ax had gone through.

After a moment, Suzanne pulled her hand back. "Oh, well," she said. "Manners aren't for everyone. But I’m sure you can make it up to me." She put a hand to his forehead, just the briefest touch, and he gasped and sagged against the stacks. His head was — she had done something —

"Suzanne!" Darla snapped.

"Shouldn’t have promised Alice would spank me," Suzanne trilled, bright and poisonous as a PTA mom. Eliot heard it like she was speaking through water. "Do give my best to Sheila, dear." She trotted off between the stacks, leaving Eliot turned inside out.

Darla said something to him, and he nodded. Then he sat down with his back against the stacks, folded his legs up to shield himself, and covered his face with his Library books. I'm fine, he thought, hazy. Maybe he was a little sad, but that was understandable. And he felt so much longing for Quentin that he couldn’t stand it, but that was situation normal for him. And yeah, he felt a little guilty, of course he did, he’d put his poisonous hands all over everything, and his actions had destroyed so many lives, and he’d been so frightened for so long, not knowing if he would die inside his happy place before he could ever see his friends again, and then he'd gotten out and Quentin was dead and it was all so much _worse_ —

Oh.

Oh, well. Okay. So he was — not fine. It was manageable. His shoulders shook, and he didn't know if he was laughing or crying. His head was still so hazy, and he just wanted and wanted and wanted —

Okay, he thought, trying to breathe. Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay —

—-

Eliot was gone for two hours, which Quentin should have been calm about but wasn't. They were getting nowhere with the research, and every once in a while Sheila's assistant would come by and ask him if he needed anything. Quentin needed Alice to stop looking at him like she’d run over his dog, and he needed the Library walls to actually be vertical, and he needed Eliot in his sightline. He tipped his head to one side and then the other, to see if that would fix the problem of the walls. It it made things, impossibly, even worse. He gave up, and tucked himself further under Julia’s arm.

Sheila's other assistant came in, looking worried, and rushed over to Alice. She whispered something in Alice’s ear that had Alice sitting bolt upright in her chair, looking murderous. Alice marched out of the research room with Sheila's other assistant close behind her, and Quentin, on a hunch, followed after.

He couldn’t hear much of what they were saying. He caught the word "Suzanne," and shuddered. He thought her heard the word "dancing," but that might have been his imagination. Sheila's other assistant led Alice (and Quentin) through what felt like miles of stacks, until they saw a tall figure sitting on the floor, crying quietly while he hugged a couple of books to his chest.

Jesus fucking Christ, Quentin thought. He was going to find Suzanne and skin her alive.

Alice said, "Eliot!" and rushed over. She leaned down to touch him and he flinched away. Quentin would have told her that wasn’t a good idea, except he couldn’t move. She said, "Eliot, do you want me to get, get Margo, or —"

"No," Eliot said. "I'm okay, just," he wiped his eyes. “Q. Is he safe?”

And now Quentin could move. He took a step, making sure his shoe made a scuffing sound against the floor, and the group of them startled like rabbits. "Hey, El," Quentin said.

Alice looked at Eliot, and then at Quentin, and her face went through about seven expressions before she landed on determined. "I'll take care of Suzanne," she told Quentin, and for a moment he forgot how hurt he still felt and he just — loved her. She nodded at him, like he'd given her an answer, and swept away with Sheila's other assistant, leaving him and Eliot alone.

Quentin hadn’t had to deal with Eliot in this state nearly as much as Eliot had had to deal with him. But it was still familiar as sleep, to walk over slowly and sit down within arm's reach, and wait for Eliot to gasp, and shudder, and reel him in. They ended up with Quentin half curled into Eliot's side, half pulled back against Eliot's chest, with Eliot's pile of books digging uncomfortably into his kidneys.

"El," he said, wriggling. "The books."

"Sorry, Jesus, sorry," Eliot said, dumping them on the floor. He pressed his face into the side of Quentin’s neck. "Just give me a minute. I'll be fine in a minute."

He absolutely would not. Quentin cried as easily as people shook hands, but Eliot, for all his talk of remaking himself, still had a vicious streak of Midwestern stoicism that manifested mostly when he was sad. If Eliot was this far gone, things were really awful, and he probably wouldn't calm down for a while.

That was okay. Quentin had a while. He had all the time in the world. He said, "Okay, you get a minute," and leaned back a little, bringing his hand up to Eliot’s neck, and held on while he cried.

Quentin didn't know how long they sat there. He rubbed his thumb along Eliot’s pulse point, and wiggled his toes to keep his feet from falling asleep, and tried not to look at the walls. He felt his heart twist a little more inside his chest with every rough breath that Eliot took, and he wished he could hide Eliot away somewhere to keep him safe from everything.

At one point Margo stuck her head around a corner, saw Eliot curled around Quentin and shaking, and gave him a look that said, very clearly, that if he didn’t treat Eliot like spun sugar and diamonds then she'd fuck him up in horribly inventive ways. Quentin looked back helplessly, because honestly what did she think he was trying to do here? And then she rolled her eyes and marched off, presumably to go shank Suzanne.

Eliot’s shaking started to taper off, and his breathing slowed. Quentin buried a hand in Eliot’s hair and pulled at his head the tiniest bit. "Hey," he said softly.

Eliot sniffed, and wormed his fingers behind Quentin's back, probably to reach for his pocket square. "Hey," he said, voice scratchy. "Uh."

Quentin felt an almost unbearable tenderness for him. He was so _bad_ at this, and he tried so hard, and he didn't let himself need anyone but he did let himself take comfort in Quentin. 

"What the hell did Suzanne say to you?" Quentin asked.

Eliot pressed the cool tip of his nose to the back of Quentin’s neck, tap, tap, tap. Quentin felt a little zing each time. Stop that, he told his body. He should have told Eliot to stop, too, but he didn't. Eliot said, "She told me that I’m _sad_." He sounded confused.

Quentin raised his eyebrows. "... but you knew that?" he asked. Aliens in outer space knew Eliot was sad. _Quentin_ knew Eliot was sad.

Eliot sighed, and shifted them a little. He rubbed the side of his face against Quentin’s back, his arms tight around Quentin’s chest. Quentin just went with it, like a ragdoll cat. Eliot said, "I was doing the thing again."

"What thi— oh," Quentin said. _That_ thing. Immediately his view of the last couple of days twisted forty-five degrees: of _course_ Eliot had been kind to him, of _course_ Eliot had paid attention.

After Arielle had died, Eliot had somehow, inexplicably, decided he was only allowed one gear, and that was Relentlessly Perfect House-Husband. The rest of it, his anger and grief and and exhaustion, his desire and confusion and joy, had built up behind a firewall for six months while Quentin flopped around feeling everything, until Eliot just couldn’t do it anymore. They’d sent Teddy to Arielle’s parents and then had a fight that legitimately frightened the neighbors, followed by the absolute loudest sex Quentin had ever had in his life. Eliot had pulled the same act a couple more times in the years after, enough that Quentin had gotten able to recognize it for what it was. Except not anymore, apparently.

This time the gear was probably Quentin’s Perfect Friend. Quentin got it, he did, and he tried not to feel hurt, that all the wonderful things Eliot had done for him since he'd come back from the mirror world were really just a distraction. Besides, what did he want, anyway? Eliot loved him enough on regular days, and he hadn’t had any of those in such a long time. Wanting more than that was — greedy, and inappropriate, and whatever. "So…"

"So, speaking of graceful emotional deflection," Eliot said, rallying, "I got you something." He held up the books he'd been crying on.

"Or we could talk about the emotions you’re deflecting," Quentin said, and then he saw the first title and he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

"Just some light reading," Eliot said, voice bright and only a little clogged with the aftermath of tears. Tralala, we're all fine here. Nobody had just cried their heart out. "For when you need a break." 

The book was called Frankie Manning Dreams of Lindy, and the leather cover had a design of two dancers doing an aerial. Eliot said, "Apparently he had these competition dreams, where he’d run down every single move he ever invented in increasing order of difficulty, and then he’d have them box each other. Don’t ask me how that worked, anatomically.”

"This is," Quentin said, and shook his head. It was a small thing, but nobody else had ever known him this well, and the kindness of it was overwhelming.

Eliot said, "The other book is just straight-up competition stats." It was called ILHC Judge Considers Predictive Algorithm for Guessing Future Competition Winners. "The titles aren’t inspiring, but I figured you’d get a kick out of them."

"You," Quentin cleared his throat. "You figured right."

Eliot was quiet for a minute, brushing his thumb against Quentin’s side, and then he said, "Listen, um. I want to tell you something. A story. But I need you not to look at me or talk to me until I’m finished, okay?"

Quentin said, "Okay." He couldn’t even brace himself. The books had ruined him for at least the next hour. "No talking, got it."

Eliot squeezed his chest, and rearranged them again, so that his head was resting on Quentin’s shoulder. He said, "I. Uh. I had this friend."

Oh, shit, Quentin thought.

Eliot sounded tentative, like he didn’t know what words would come out next. He didn’t speak loudly and he didn’t speak fast, but he spoke, and Quentin was riveted. "He was kind. He was such a sweet person, and he made _sense_. Being around him made sense. And he was cute, sure," Eliot’s voice had a smile in it. "But lots of guys are cute, and almost nobody is _good_. I don't actually fit very well with most people — I'm not sure if you knew that. But our friendship was perfect for me." Eliot stopped. Breathed in. "Then he kissed me, and I thought, How will I survive, if I never get to have this again?"

Oh, god. Quentin made a sound before he could stop himself, and clutched at Eliot’s arms. His heart was pounding. Oh _god_. Why had he promised not to look?

Eliot said, "Spoiler alert: I did survive. I hurt him, too. I pushed him away, after years of — and I didn't trust him the way that I should have. I lied to him. I got in trouble, and he had to come rescue me, and he was tortured for it for _months_ , and then he died." Eliot's voice cracked on the last word, and he trembled a little, and then he squeezed Quentin tighter and cleared his throat. "And now he's alive again, because someone attacked the laws of nature with a lemon zester, and I’m going to fight like hell to make sure he stays that way. But he died thinking I didn’t love him, and there’s nothing I’ll ever be able to do to change that."

And Quentin had promised, but this was too much. How could Eliot expect him to stay quiet after _that_? "El," he said. He pushed at Eliot’s arms, which were like iron bands around his chest. "Eliot, come on."

Eliot let go. Quentin scrambled away and took a breath, and turned. Eliot was sitting with a hand over his mouth, his eyes huge and glassy, looking like someone had torn his guts out for him. "Eliot," Quentin said, helplessly.

Eliot looked away, at the ceiling and the fucked-up walls and the books. Then he looked back at Quentin. He put his hand down and licked his lip. He said, "I love you."

And Quentin felt — so much. His heart was too big for his chest. There was so much feeling inside of him, it made him hum like a tuning fork.

Eliot said, "And I'm sorry. And I’m very, very sad. So, well. Do with that what you will." Then he just _looked_ at Quentin, like he would take whatever Quentin gave him, good or bad.

Well, then.

Quentin got up on his knees and shuffled back into Eliot's space. He reached over slowly, and tilted Eliot's face up, and kissed him. Eliot sighed and leaned into it, making a small, helpless, beautiful noise in the back of his throat that made Quentin want to just crawl inside him. Then Eliot reached one hand up and cradled his neck, taking that part of Quentin back from the Monster, thank god, thank _god_ — and kissed him back.

It was different from how Quentin had thought it would be. He'd forgotten the taste of Eliot’s mouth, the way his stubble would catch at the edge of Quentin’s lips and send electricity zinging through him. He'd forgotten how big Eliot’s hands felt when they were on his face. He'd forgotten how devastating Eliot could be, kissing him open and slow and sweet, with the touch of his tongue at the end like a secret.

He'd been kissed like this for years. He'd grown old being kissed like this. But the feeling of it was so much more than he remembered.

After a minute, he pulled away. Eliot looked dazed, and leaned up a little as if he wanted to follow Quentin's mouth. Quentin pressed the tips of his fingers to the curve of Eliot's upper lip and said, "Come home with me."

Eliot looked at him, wide-eyed, and nodded.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot makes a promise. Julia faces a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains an explicit sex scene. If that’s not your thing, skip the beginning and go to, “Quentin woke in the middle of the night.”

Quentin got them up and back to the research room. He left Eliot’s books with Julia. He sent Margo out to hug Eliot, and he got some kind of portkey, and he made excuses for the both of them, all while Eliot stood there in a post-crying, post-confessional haze, touching his mouth and trying to remind himself that this was real.

Then Quentin ported them back to Kady’s apartment. He led Eliot up the trashy spiral staircase to a bedroom as small and soft and comfortable as he was, and pulled Eliot onto the bed with him, and then Eliot proceeded to have probably the weirdest sex of his life to date -- including Encanto Oculto and that time with Fen and Hot Welters Fan and the golem -- because he just _could not stop talking about his feelings_.

"I'm angry," he said, unbuttoning Quentin's shirt and kissing the skin it revealed, feeling frantic, feeling — everything. He licked Quentin's nipple, and then bit it. Quentin gave a quiet moan and grabbed his hair, holding him still, and he obliged by biting again. He had missed the taste of Quentin’s skin. "I'm so angry about what the Monster did to me. What it did to _you_."

Quentin, bless him, just rolled with it. "I, uh, I was angry at the Monster, too," he said, breathless and maybe a little confused, but Brave Little Toastering his way through. It probably helped that Eliot had a hand down the back of his jeans.

Eliot asked, "How are you not angry at _me_?" He reached for the fly of Quentin's jeans with his other hand and nearly tore the button off, trying to get them undone.

"I'm bad at that part," Quentin said. Eliot bit his nipple again, and ran his tongue along Quentin’s sternum. This all felt familiar and also completely new, and it made him so hungry. He ached with how much he wanted.

"I was scared the whole time," Eliot said. Jesus. He grabbed Quentin’s hand and shoved Quentin’s fingers in his mouth so he’d stop talking.

“No, what are you doing?” Quentin asked. “Tell me.” He pulled his fingers out and ran them over Eliot’s lips, and Eliot froze, staring at him. “I want you to.”

Eliot said, “Uh.”

Quentin said, “I spent six months not knowing where you were or what was happening to you. _Tell me_." He looked surprised at himself, and then he lifted his chin and stared Eliot down, like Eliot was going to ask him to take it back or something.

Eliot felt a pulse of affection and grief and love that went from his heart to his fingertips and the tips of his toes. He gripped Quentin's wet fingers and put them in his mouth again, just for a second, not to stop himself from talking but because it felt so good. Then he moved Quentin's hand to the back of his neck. He said, “I thought about you all the time. You’re my favorite thing to think about.”

Quentin looked at him with big eyes, mouth open. His 'Take me now,' look. Well, Eliot _was_. He leaned in close, dragging his lips against Quentin’s cheek until Quentin turned his head for a kiss. "You make me crazy," Eliot said, kissing him and kissing him. "Fifty years. I've wanted you longer than I've been alive."

"Me, uh." Quentin's hand on his neck was shaking. "Eliot. Me too, you make me."

"I know," Eliot said. The skin under Quentin's ear always smelled incredible. He put his nose there, and then licked it, and Quentin jolted like he'd been shocked. "You told me."

Quentin said, "I thought I was making it up. When you told me that’s not you. I thought I'd dreamed up how we were —“

“No, no,” Eliot said. “I was lying, I —“ he buried his face in Quentin’s neck and ran his hands up and down Quentin’s sides. Quentin’s skin was so soft. “You scared me.”

“What?” Quentin pulled at his hair, and Eliot went where he was pulled, until they were face to face. Quentin was frowning, his hair everywhere, and his lips were red and his eyes were wild, and he had a bite mark on his chin. Eliot felt the same tenderness he’d felt in the Library, when the only thing he’d wanted was to hold Quentin close and spill his heart out. But he was also still hard, and so was Quentin, and he was so turned on he couldn’t see straight, and what he wanted _now_ , besides telling Quentin he loved him a million more times, was to crawl down the bed and get his mouth on Quentin’s dick. “What do you mean, I scare you?” Quentin asked.

Eliot said, “I love you.” He’d said it to Quentin before, kind of a lot in the other timeline, but never when they were fucking, always where he could have said, ‘As a friend,' if he needed to hide. This was new and vulnerable and strange. It felt amazing. “That’s pretty scary.”

That wasn’t really an explanation, but Quentin seemed to get it anyway. His gaze went hot and he leaned up and bit Eliot’s mouth, and Eliot’s priorities did a full swing from confession-and-then-dick to pretty much whatever the fuck Quentin wanted. Then Quentin took Eliot’s hand and brought it up to cover his mouth. And —

Oh. _Yes_. He remembered that. He’d loved that, every time.

Eliot turned Quentin over on his side — Jesus, they both still had their shirts on, Eliot was so off his game — and finished peeling them out of their clothes, pausing to bite the curve of Quentin’s ass and then lick the back of his knee, that one spot that made him whimper every time. Then he curled up around Quentin’s back, one hand over Quentin’s mouth and the other on his dick. He rubbed his stubble on the back of Quentin’s neck, and pressed soft kisses to his shoulders, and pushed his own dick between Quentin’s thighs so that every twitch and movement of Quentin’s body sent pleasure shivering through him. Quentin moaned against his hand, his movements uncoordinated, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to arch back against Eliot’s mouth or push into his fist. Eliot took his hand off Quentin’s mouth and Quentin drew in a huge, heaving breath of air, and then arched against him like a cat.

Eliot put his hand over Quentin’s mouth again, lightly this time, just a reminder of what he could do, and Quentin shuddered and grabbed his wrist and held it there. He just kept putting himself in Eliot’s hands, trusting, loving, and Eliot hadn’t taken care of him before but he would now. He said, “I’m sorry,” and it made Quentin shake harder. “I love this, I love that you let me take care of you.”

Quentin said, “He, he didn’t,” against Eliot’s hand, and Eliot took his hand away. Quentin moved it down, until Eliot was gently holding the side of his neck, and then he made a sound like a sob.

“Tell me,” Eliot said. He ran his nose behind Quentin’s ear, and worked his thumb over the head of Quentin’s dick.

Quentin said, “He put his hands all over me, for months, but it wasn’t you.” He said it like a confession. It should have killed the mood, they probably should have stopped and talked about it, but it just made Eliot hotter, that Quentin was telling him, that he got to be the one to make it better. Maybe they were both wired wrong. Eliot didn’t fucking care. “I know you,” Quentin said. “I know your hands. Touch me.”

And that was — how was he supposed to think when Quentin _said_ things like that?

Eliot kissed Quentin’s jaw and turned him around again so they were face to face. Quentin leaned up, offering, and Eliot kissed him. If Eliot never had this again ever in this life, he'd had it twice now, and both times it was the best thing he'd ever done. He pressed his mouth to Quentin’s open mouth, breathing in the sounds Quentin made, and put his hand on Quentin's dick again, and he pulled out every fucking trick he had. _I’m going to ruin you for anyone else_ , he thought. No more wanting and not fighting for it.

Eliot felt Quentin wind up tighter and tighter, and heard him make that _sound_ , the one he'd told Alice he loved, and it was so good and made him so happy that he started laughing. Quentin came in Eliot’s hand while Eliot laughed against his neck. Then Quentin laid Eliot flat on the bed and crawled down his body and said, “Tell me,” before he started sucking Eliot’s dick, and Eliot told him everything. 

Usually afterward, Quentin’s brain would just go and go, like a mechanical toy, while Eliot would pin him down and gently, firmly encourage him to relax and enjoy the afterglow. This time, Quentin watched him with this expression on his face like Eliot was some new astonishing thing, while Eliot cataloged his body and tried to commit it to memory.

“I stopped sleeping,” Quentin said. Eliot pressed a kiss to the inside of Quentin’s knee, as gentle as he knew how to be. He'd forgotten that Quentin had a birthmark in the shape of Fire Island there. He’d forgotten how much it hurt, to know that Quentin was hurting. Quentin said, “I thought he was going to kill you, and I didn’t know what to do.”

Eliot nodded, and rubbed his cheek against Quentin’s belly. The skin there was so soft, and he hadn’t remembered. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Tell me.” Quentin wasn’t the only one who’d been starving, desperate to _know_.

Quentin said, “I don’t. I don’t think I’m ready for the rest of it. Not like you.” He ran a hand through Eliot’s hair.

Eliot said, “Get a supernatural creature to whack all your repressed emotion with a hammer, you'll be plenty ready." But then he shook his head, and tucked his fingers into the crook of Quentin's elbow. "No. Take your time. I'll be here."

Eliot had forgotten: how huffy Quentin got when Eliot tapped on his wooden shoulder; the taste of the skin between Quentin's fingers: the invisible place on his chest that was so ticklish it nearly made him cry. Eliot had forgotten Quentin’s shoulders, his hips, his gorgeous strong thighs. Quentin let himself be moved around while Eliot touched and touched, and then he reached over and grabbed Eliot's hand, and pulled it to his mouth, and kissed it. He said, "You can't lie to me again."

Eliot went still, and then twitched when Quentin gnawed on his thumb, leaving teeth marks. "Shit! No, I mean. I won't."

Quentin pulled some more, and Eliot went. He draped himself over Quentin. When they were face to face like this, Quentin's toes only reached down to his shins, and there was no reason to love that so much, but he did. Quentin played with his hand, watching Eliot's fingers instead of his eyes. Quentin said, "You don’t, I'm not expecting you to, you know. Love me forever. But please don't lie."

And Eliot still wasn't done talking about his feelings, apparently, because he said, "You should expect it," before he knew he was going to. But it was the truth. "You should. I want you to."

Quentin pressed the tip of his nose to Eliot’s palm and breathed in, shaky. He said, "Okay."

Okay. Eliot kissed him deep and slow, reveling in it, thinking, Finally, finally, finally.

—-

Quentin woke in the middle of the night when he heard his bedroom door creak open. He was practically glued to Eliot’s back, one arm tight around his waist and their fingers linked together. He didn’t know what had woken him up, at first. All he felt was Eliot’s skin against his, and a heart full of joy, and under it, the ocean of grief and despair and blank gray nothing that he'd carried around inside him for the last few months, pushing up from where he’d shoved it away after he came back to life.

It would sweep him away soon. He knew it was coming. But not yet, he told himself. Let me have this first.

Over Eliot’s shoulder he saw a small shape with long, dark hair, outlined in the light from the hallway, and then Margo shut the door and it was dark again.

"Bambi?" Eliot asked softly, sounding groggy. He twitched against Quentin’s arm and then froze, as if he'd just noticed Quentin was still there. Then he slowly, slowly pulled the covers back, his movements huge and almost comically obvious. It was so clear he was trying not to disturb Quentin, and he was so awful at it. It was the sweetest, dumbest thing, and Quentin just -- loved him. He pressed a kiss to the back of Eliot's neck, to show he was awake and because the wanted to, and Eliot's hilarious quiet-time performance relaxed into something, actually, a little quiet.

Quentin heard Margo cross the floor, and then he felt the bed dip as she crawled in and tucked herself against Eliot's chest. Eliot used the hand that wasn’t linked with Quentin's to gather her in.

Quentin was hit with a visceral sense memory, all of a sudden, of the night the three of them had spent together. The smell of Margo's hair, the feeling of kissing her. It had been awful the next day, and the fact that they did it at all had been awful, but the feeling of it in the moment had been really good.

Margo said, quietly, "You're so blissed out I'm getting a contact high."

Eliot hummed. "I hope you're enjoying it," he said, sounding adoring. "I am." Margo gave a brief huff of laughter, and Eliot curled tighter around her, bringing Quentin with him.

Margo was quiet, and Quentin started to drift off again, and then she said, “You know I would do anything to keep you safe.”

“Of course,” Eliot said, his voice soft, with that tone he had that was just for Margo.

Margo said, “Good,” like that was it, that was the whole thing. And, well, it was.

Quentin felt her hand briefly, lightly touch his hair. He thought, I know you. He was asleep again before he realized what was happening.

—-

In the morning, Quentin was still there. Margo was cuddled up to his chest, and Quentin was wrapped around his back, and he felt like the happiest sandwich filling that ever lived, and also the most sexually frustrated. He nudged Margo’s shoulder. “Bambi,” he whispered.

She cracked one eye open, looked at Quentin’s arm around his chest, and gave him her most glorious evil grin. Eliot rolled his eyes. Yeah, yeah, he was a drama queen and also a fucking cliche, and could she go, now? And she clearly loved him, because she only laughed the tiniest bit before she kissed him and went.

Quentin startled awake at the sound of the door clicking shut. “Huh?” he asked. Eliot turned so that they were face to face and just looked at him. “Why is anybody awake,” Quentin said.

“What, like, ever?” Eliot asked. Quentin squinted at him, hair a disaster, looking confused and a little cranky at being woken up, and he was so hot it made Eliot want to throw something. Eliot scooted down bed a little, until he had to tip his head up to see Quentin’s face. It was one of his favorite things, and he liked it even better when Quentin tilted down and kissed him, off-center and uncoordinated and perfect. Eliot hummed, feeling — not happy all the way through, no. He still had too much pain inside him for that. But he felt as if some big, jagged wound in his heart had healed over smooth, with only a little scarring, the kind that reminded you that you were stronger because you had lived through something.

“Yes,” Quentin said. “Ever. Why would you do that.”

Eliot said, “Mostly to fuck with you,” and he laughed at Quentin’s offended expression. Then he pounced.

They left the bedroom possibly-hours later, Eliot feeling hungry and deliciously worn-out and delighted with the world. He hummed Lizzo as they left Quentin’s room and went down the trashy spiral staircase. About halfway down, Eliot noticed Alice pacing in the living room. She was dressed immaculately in one of her goth crop top and miniskirt combos, and all of a sudden he felt grubby and underdressed in yesterday’s clothes. Alice looked past him to Quentin, and her face did something complicated before it settled into a tight, awkward smile. Then she started pacing again.

Well, damn. Best to get it over with, Eliot thought, whatever it was. He grabbed Quentin’s hand and pulled him into the kitchen, and got out the French press.

Alice marched up to him as he was grinding coffee beans. She looked determined, and Eliot braced himself. Whatever friendship they’d been building, if this was the thing that broke it — he’d be sad, but he would manage. Then Alice said, “I’m sorry about Suzanne, what she did to you yesterday. She’s been dealt with.”

Eliot honestly hadn’t been expecting that, and he was still a little dizzy with the afterglow, so the first words out of his mouth were, “Exactly how kinky _are_ you?”

Alice turned a bright, angry red and gave him a scandalized schoolmistress look, which he absolutely deserved.

“Jesus, sorry,” he said. “That was out of line. I just,” he sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. “She fucked me up,” he confessed.

Alice said, “It’s fine,” and it clearly wasn’t, but she was also clearly trying. She still looked a little betrayed, very ‘I thought we were bros’, and now Eliot felt bad. He grimaced at her, apologetic, and her expression softened.

Eliot said, “Thank you, for whatever you did.” _Dealt with_ could mean any number of things, most of which he probably didn’t want to know about.

Alice nodded, and gave Quentin sad anime eyes, and then she marched back to the living room and started pacing again. Every couple of seconds, she would look up at the stairs. It was not the weirdest she’d ever been, but that was a high bar.

Eliot looked over at Quentin, who was watching her, expressionless. He had the air of a man who would cling to a blood feud until the world ended, and if Eliot was the emotionally mature one in this relationship then they were both in trouble. He nudged Quentin’s shoulder.

Quentin jumped, and looked at him. Eliot cut his eyes to Alice, and raised his eyebrows. Quentin glared. Eliot tried to convey how deeply unimpressed he was, which probably didn’t have the impact it should have because he was too besotted. But whatever his face did made Quentin roll his eyes so hard he almost did a somersault, and march over to the living room to try to talk to Alice. Eliot would have eavesdropped, except they were speaking too quietly, so he busied himself with the coffee grinder instead.

The conversation didn’t last long, and it didn’t seem to cheer either of them, but at least Quentin wasn’t sad as he slumped back to the kitchen and leaned against Eliot’s side. Eliot offered him coffee, and he looked sulky but he took it. Whatever, Eliot thought. I’m in charge of your happiness, now, and I say you get friends.

Julia came down the trashy spiral staircase before Eliot could start defending his thesis, looking adorable in a pajama set covered in ice cream cones. She smiled at Quentin, coming into the kitchen and reaching for the French press, and then Alice zoomed over and said, “Julia,” so loudly that they all stared at her.

Julia said, “Uh, good morning,” leaning back a little.

Alice said, “I need to talk to you.” Eliot saw that she was twisting her hands together.

Julia raised her eyebrows. “Can you talk to me while I have my coffee?”

Alice scowled, and said, “Fine,” like she was trying to be magnanimous, and Eliot wished he’d been her friend for the last couple of years, because she was the _best_. She said, “So yesterday when I was,” and glanced at Eliot, “talking to the Library’s corpse eater —“

Oh. Eliot didn’t want to smile anymore. He felt Quentin grab his hand, and he linked their fingers together and held on tight.

Julia choked on her coffee. “I’m sorry, the Library has a what?”

“A corpse eater,” Alice said.

“Yeah, that’s what I …” Julia shook her head, and drank some more. “Okay, I’m back. Hit me.”

Alice fidgeted, and Eliot took pity on her and poured her a cup of coffee one-handed. She grabbed it and didn’t seem to notice she'd taken anything, but her fidgeting stopped. “I was talking to the Library’s corpse eater, and — they can. Smell things. Gods. Feelings. She said something.” Alice cleared her throat. “She said I smelled like the god of death.”

For a second, Eliot was right back in the Library hallway, with Suzanne’s cold fingers touching his forehead. He shook himself, trying to shake the memory away. Quentin let go of his hand and then rested a palm lightly on Eliot’s lower back underneath his shirt, and it helped Eliot feel like he could breathe again. He leaned into it.

“That’s oddly specific,” Julia said.

Alice said, “Julia, I think she was — smelling — whatever your connection was with Our Lady Underground.”

“Uh,” Quentin said. “She said I smelled like the gods, too. I don’t know how discerning her nose really is, I mean, we’ve kind of been around a lot of gods, for kind of a while. It’s like saying Julia and I are both short.”

Eliot grinned into his coffee cup. He felt Quentin’s hand tug at the bottom of his shirt, just for a second, and the last of the horror that clung to his memory of yesterday dissolved.

Alice said, “She told you that you smelled like gods, yes, but she is a corpse eater. The god of death is different for them. I think she might know something.”

Quentin asked, “Then why didn’t she say it to me, or Eliot? I’ve been around Julia more than anybody. Why did she go to you?”

Alice bit her lip and looked down at her coffee cup. “She thinks I have some kind of power,” she said, nearly mumbling. “In the Library.”

Eliot raised his eyebrows. “That’s — an opinion,” he said.

Alice cleared her throat and shook her hair back. “Anyway,” she said. “I’d like to have her check you, Julia.”

“That is a terrible idea,” Quentin said.

“Second that,” Eliot said. What the hell?

Alice said, “Look, we’re not getting anywhere, and it’s getting worse out there.”

Eliot asked, “How much worse?”

Alice pulled out her cell phone — from where in that outfit, he had no idea — unlocked it, and read, “‘Christianity is under attack from false resurrections. Liberal fake news is destroying the funeral industry. Fight for your religious freedom.’” She put the phone down on the counter. “Also I have eighty-five confirmed cases now.”

That wasn’t great. He looked at Quentin, who stared back, looking torn.

Behind Quentin, Julia was frowning thoughtfully. She asked, “Q, do you think she might be able to help?”

Quentin turned to her. “I think she’s horrifying,” he said. “I think she messed with Eliot’s head yesterday and he didn’t calm down for hours. I think she’s dangerous.”

Alice said, “I made sure she’ll never do that again.”

“Alice is right, we’re _not_ getting anywhere on our own,” Julia said. “And.” She stopped, and bit her lip. She glanced up to the mezzanine, and then said, “I didn’t get to see what I could do, what I could become. If this Suzanne can tell me anything…”

Quentin scrubbed a hand through his hair, making it flop into his face. He blew it away, and it flopped down again. “Okay, but I’d like to go with you.”

Julia smiled. She had a smile she reserved just for Quentin, all quiet and soft, and Eliot felt like he’d been given a gift every time he got to see it. “You gonna shiv her if she’s mean to me?” she asked.

Quentin, voted least likely to shiv someone five years running, said, “Maybe.”

Julia grinned. “We should probably both put pants on, then.” She left, carrying her coffee cup.

Quentin looked down at his pajama-clad self and said, “Huh.” Then he looked at Eliot, a question in his face, and Eliot shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” Eliot said. “I want to, but I don’t think I can.” The misery of yesterday had faded, but he still felt like he wanted to scream when he thought about going back there.

Quentin’s expression went soft. “Of course,” he said. He squeezed Eliot’s hand, glanced at Alice, and then went back up the trashy spiral staircase to his room, leaving Alice and Eliot alone.

Eliot had sort of never been in this situation before. He and Arielle had gotten along so comfortably and so well that it had been a surprise to him, when he looked up and realized years had passed. Whenever he and Margo had shared anyone, before that night with Quentin, it had been just about bodies and fun. But he liked Alice, genuinely liked her, and he was going to love Quentin until the multiverse cut him into pieces to make him stop, and he really just didn’t know how to negotiate that.

Alice looked just as confused. She was glancing at him sideways, and then she’d look away, glance and then away. She seemed like she wanted to say something, so Eliot waited.

Finally, Alice turned to him and said, “A pile of money on the bed and everything, huh?”

She sounded awkward as hell, and the second after she said it she looked like she wanted to take it back. Eliot was so surprised he started laughing, and after a minute she smiled. He was still laughing when Margo swept into the kitchen and grabbed his coffee.

“What are you assholes laughing at?” she asked. She tucked herself under Eliot’s arm, and gave Alice a smile like a razor blade, shiny and sharp. Eliot kissed her forehead and pressed at the corner of her mouth with his thumb, and when she looked at him, questioning, he smiled at her. She relaxed.

“We were just discussing art,” Eliot said, and Alice nodded.

Quentin came down first, bundled into a soft-looking cardigan that made Eliot want to pull him under the covers again and curl up around him, and also made him want to blow Quentin right there in the kitchen. His hair was damp, and he smelled like cedarwood soap, and he looked at Eliot with bright eyes, and Eliot loved him. “More coffee?” Eliot asked.

Quentin shook his head, and went to grab the horrible rainbow cereal that Eliot used to hide his whisky.

Julia came down a few minutes later, and then the three of them started getting ready to go. Suddenly, Eliot wished he was going with them. He couldn’t, he absolutely couldn’t go back to the fucking Library and fucking Suzanne, but the idea of letting Quentin out of his sight made him itch. Quentin glanced at him in the middle of putting on shoes, and frowned. He stopped with one shoe still off, and went back to Eliot in the kitchen. Eliot untucked Margo from his side and stepped closer to Quentin and said, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Quentin said. “Do you. I can not go, if you want.”

Of all the sweet, hopeless — “How calm will you be, if Julia goes to the Library without you?” He smiled, though, because he was in love and he couldn’t help it.

Quentin shrugged. “How calm will you be if I go?” he asked, like that was a reasonable response.

Eliot wanted, very badly, to kiss him. He wanted it helplessly, the way he always wanted it, and he wanted it specifically, in that moment, because of Quentin’s shrug and the small frown between his eyebrows, and the fact that he still only had one shoe on. “Baby,” Eliot said, before he could stop himself.

Quentin looked startled, and then he smiled. He popped up on his toes, leaning in and reaching for Eliot’s face, and kissed him there in the kitchen in front of Margo and Julia and _Alice_ , like he didn’t care if anybody knew. Like he’d be happy if they knew. Like maybe he was announcing he planned to keep Eliot around.

Eliot kissed him back, thrilled. When Quentin pulled away, he was smiling again, and behind him Eliot could see that Julia was smiling, too. She looked like she was about to start clapping her hands for them, which was — really nice. Alice was _almost_ smiling, a little pained and a little happy, the way Eliot would have almost-smiled if it had been the other way around. That was okay, too.

He heard a wolf whistle behind him, and then Margo said, “Get it, Coldwater,” and Quentin gave her the finger over Eliot’s shoulder and went back to his remaining shoe. Alice fumbled in her pocket and reached for Julia’s hand, and Julia reached for Quentin, and then they blinked out of the penthouse.

Eliot turned back to Margo, feeling buoyant, and when she wolf whistled again and started clapping, he grinned and gave a little bow.

—-

Coming to the Library from the outside world was getting less and less shocking, but it still sucked. Especially when he felt warm all through from kissing Eliot, and had the memory of: the smell of fresh coffee, the way morning light filtered through the giant living room windows, the feeling of the hardwood floor under his sock feet, the feeling of Eliot’s hands and mouth all over him. After all of that, coming to the Library was like scraping a layer of skin off, flipping it inside out, and then jamming it back on again. He almost sat down right there in the hallway and covered his eyes. But Julia was still holding his hand, and she was still smiling at him, like — like the Library wasn’t miserable for her, huh. That was interesting.

Julia looked around, curious. “Do those portkey things always take us to the same part of the Library?” she asked.

Alice was digging through her pocket again, and didn’t answer. Quentin said, “The first time it brought me here, I landed in a room somewhere.”

Alice said, “Two floors down, one wing over.”

“How do you remember that?” Quentin asked. “This place is a rabbit warren built by MC Escher.”

Alice opened her mouth, so clearly ready to say, ‘It wasn’t that difficult’ that Quentin found himself getting preemptively frustrated with her, and then she bit her lip and said, “Practice.”

And — okay. He could accept — okay.

Alice took what looked like a stun gun out of her pocket, and nodded to herself. She led them through the stacks, taking a left turn and then another left, and then a right. Everywhere looked exactly the same, and everywhere was awful, so he found himself watching Alice, instead.

She was still beautiful. He could still feel the fragile new beginnings of love for her, hidden away in the cage where he used to keep his feelings for Eliot. That cage sure got a lot of action, he thought, and it made him sad. But he could imagine, someday soon, loving her the way he loved Julia. And he had Eliot again, which was better than anything he could have asked for. Alice glanced at Quentin and flashed him a tiny, shy smile, and he smiled back.

Julia shook their linked hands and asked, “Did you ever imagine, when we were kids, that we’d end up like this?” She was staring at the books, the awful walls and the ugly fluorescent lights, with a look of wonder on her face. Knowledge students.

Quentin asked, “You mean, in a giant fascist puzzle box hunting a supernatural creature who eats corpses, while our friends hang out at home and have waffles without us?”

Julia swatted him on the chest. “No, asshole, I mean in the middle of some of the greatest adventures in the multiverse.”

Truth to tell, he was pretty fucking sick of adventures. He thought he might be about ready to retire from adventures. But seeing Julia like this, lit up from within the way she hadn’t been since the Binder took her goddess-potential away, made him really happy to be here with her. “That, too,” he said.

Then Alice said, “She’s over here,” and Julia snapped to attention. Quentin braced himself, and took a breath.

Suzanne, when they found her, was standing at a reference desk, stroking the cheek of a very uncomfortable-looking middle-aged Librarian and murmuring to him. She had what looked like a torture implement in her other hand. Quentin went over battle magic spells in his head. “Hi, Cyrus,” Alice said loudly. “I’d like to borrow Suzanne.”

Cyrus looked like he wanted to cry with relief. “Sure,” he said, “go for it,” and skittered away.

Suzanne watched Alice, looking slightly freaked out and also like she was seriously crushing, and what? She opened her mouth, breathed in, and jumped as if she‘d been zapped by Alice's stun gun. Then she turned to Julia, staring. She said, “You brought her to me. Oh, _Alice_ , I knew you would.”

Julia gave a little wave. “Uh, hi? Alice said you could smell gods.”

Suzanne put down — she was still holding the fucking tenaculum from the other day, what the hell — on the reference desk and came over. “Yes, my darling one,” she said, and her voice was stranger than usual. She sounded _happy_. She smiled, showing three rows of teeth and her white, white gums. “I can do more than that. Ask anything of me, my dear.”

“Uh,” Julia said. She looked at Quentin, who had absolutely no fucking idea, and then at Alice, who looked wide-eyed and shocked, like she’d been whacked in the side of the head. Quentin felt, suddenly, as if something horrible was creeping up behind him, ready to pounce. He stepped closer to Julia and grabbed her hand again. Julia said, “Why are you talking like you know me?”

Suzanne said, “Well, perhaps I am being a little familiar. But it’s not every day one’s queen comes to visit one. I’m a little beside myself, you must forgive me.”

“One’s. Queen,” Julia said.

Suzanne frowned, and looked at Alice. “Did you not tell her?”

“Tell me what?” Julia asked sharply.

Alice said, “I didn’t know. Shit. I should have known this.” She stared at Julia. “I’m so sorry, I should have realized.”

Quentin said, “Alice, how about you _tell us_ what you should have realized.”

Alice’s expression twisted up, full of sadness and anger and confusion, and then she said, “Suzanne thinks you’re Persephone,” all in a rush.

Julia clutched Quentin’s hand _hard_. “She what?” Julia asked, sounding faint.

Quentin heard a roaring in his ears. He thought, But I just came back to her. Suzanne was saying, “Where do you think corpse eaters come from, my darling? The goddess of death made us.”

“And you think the goddess of death. Is me.” Julia’s voice was trembling. Her hand was trembling. Quentin moved to curl an arm around her, and she took a handful of his shirt in a vise grip.

Suzanne said, “I know my creator when I meet her.”

Julia said, “But I’m a human. Our Lady Underground —“

“Was death, yes,” Suzanne said. She looked almost sad. “And you may be mortal, my queen, but that doesn’t mean you have lost your potential. That pathetic paper man knew just enough to be dangerous, but no more.”

“The Binder?” Julia asked. “How do you know about him?”

Suzanne rolled her wrong, wrong eyes and said, “l am in the largest store of knowledge in the multiverse. You think the people here don’t _gossip_? I have been waiting for you since entropy first started unwinding. I tried to attract your notice —“

“Wait a minute,” Quentin said. “That shit you pulled with Eliot, that was some kind of fucked-up grab for attention?” He _was_ going to shiv her.

Suzanne sneered at him, and whoops, she was still terrifying. She said, “No, sweet pea, that was just _fun_.”

“Okay!” Julia said loudly. A very cranky ‘Hush!’ drifted out from behind one of the stacks.

“Uh, maybe we should find a room, guys,” Alice said.

“No,” Julia said to Alice, and then she turned back to Suzanne. “Tell me. You think I’m Persephone, what does that mean? Getting kidnapped by Hades, the fucking pomegranates, what?”

Suzanne frowned like a schoolteacher, except the school was from a horror movie and the whole class was demons. She asked, “How should I know how it works? All I know is what I can feel, and what I can feel is that you have the same god-spark in you that made me.”

Julia put a hand to her stomach. “I had Reynard’s spark,” she said, “and then it was mine. It was never hers.”

Suzanne shrugged. “Well, it’s close enough. And I know you feel it. Something woke you up again, reminded you who you are."

Julia’s eyes were huge. "The mirror world. I felt it, when we stepped through the mirror," she said, her gaze far away, putting ideas together lightning fast the way she did. "All of this — Alice said there were more resurrections after we got back from the mirror world. And maybe that's what happened to Eliot’s —"

Quentin flinched, and she glanced at him and bit her lip.

"There, now, all settled," Suzanne said, sounding like Mary Poppins. "If you’ll excuse me, I have some catching up to do with Cyrus.”

But. “I thought you were all,” Quentin said, and waved a hand. “You don’t want to, like, hang out with your creator?” Then he bit his tongue, hard.

Suzanne looked at him like he was a dumbass. “I met her. It was great. Now I’m done.” She turned and grabbed the tenaculum off the reference desk, and walked off in the direction poor Cyrus had gone.

After a second, Quentin said, “What the fuck. Julia.”

Alice looked from Quentin to Julia and seemed, for a second, like she was about to cry. She said, “I should probably go. Protect him and. Give you some privacy,” and she rushed off after Suzanne.

Julia and Quentin watched her leave, and then they stared at each other. Quentin felt like he was falling again. Why couldn’t they rest? Why couldn’t they have one goddamn day of rest before one of them died or got turned into the goddess of death or got possessed or _left him_?

“I need to sit down,” Quentin said, and then he went and flopped down next to the reference desk, leaning on it.

“Q, are you okay?” Julia asked, coming to crouch by him. She looked worried, but she also looked like, like —

“You felt something in the mirror world?" he asked. He hated how small his voice sounded.

She bit her lip and nodded.

"Why didn’t you tell me? Anybody?"

Julia sat down cross-legged in front of him and took his hand. He squeezed back, hard. She said, "You know, it doesn't feel like anything much, until it grows, and then," her face lit up with a smile, and her _voice_ — "it feels like everything. I thought I was making it up. Now I know. I'm not."

"And you want it," Quentin said. He felt so tired.

Julia said, "Q, I want this so bad."

Quentin sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “And you think we can trust Hades? He kidnapped Persephone and wouldn't let her leave."

Julia’s ecstatic glow dimmed a bit, at that. She said, “You're right, we can't trust gods. I need — leverage. A plan. But, Q. Do you know how hard it’s been? What Penny took from me?”

Quentin frowned. “But I thought.” He’d thought she was at peace. Hadn’t someone said? Except the more he thought about it, the more he realized: “No, I don’t know.”

Julia said, “It was awful." Her voice was shaky. "To have my body taken away from me again. To lose that part of me. I’m so angry.”

“Jules, I’m sorry,” Quentin said.

“Do you know,” Julia said, “OLU told me that no matter what choice I made, it would be the right one, as long as it was mine. And then I didn’t get to make a choice at all.”

Quentin reached out and took her other hand. “And this is your choice.” A couple of weeks ago, he would have tried to talk her out of it. But now, he just had no idea what to do. He couldn’t lose her, he couldn’t, except he was going to anyway.

Julia bit her lip, and nodded. "It feels right. I loved being a goddess. I loved helping people. Q, I miss it."

Quentin said, “Jules, you made me promise not to leave you.” He wiped his eyes. “I saw what happened to you, when I died. What happened to everybody. How is this different?”

Julia leaned forward and kissed him softly on the cheek. She pushed his hair out of his face, like she'd been doing for years. “We’ve been to the Underworld, you and me, and we came back. And, and,” she swallowed. His oldest friend, and she was just going to — “You died,” Julia said, “and it was awful and I missed you so much and it was _wrong_ , Q, it was just wrong. But — the Underworld is also, kind of, just a place full of shitty bowling alleys and bad lighting."

Quentin laughed, like she clearly wanted him to. He wiped his eyes again. “They were pretty awful,” he said.

Julia said, “Just a place, for a goddess. Because I wouldn’t be taking the passenger train to get there, I’d be driving.”

It made sense and it didn’t make sense and then it made sense again. “You’re a terrible driver,” he said, voice scratchy. “You drive like you’re from Jersey.”

Julia laughed, and sniffled. Quentin pulled on her arm, and she curled up with him, leaning against the reference desk and holding him while he cried. After a few minutes she started crying, too.

“I am happy for you,” Quentin said. And he was. He was. She deserved this. “Our Lady of Rest. Our Lady of, of —“

“Hey. I'm coming back," Julia said, her voice clogged-up and gross. "You're not getting rid of me. But while I'm gone, I’m going to really fucking miss you." She stroked his hair while he tried to breathe.

—-

Eliot and Margo were arguing over whether to order sushi or crepes, when there was a knock at the front door. Kady had rolled up from one of the hedge safehouses and was working her way through a Trapper Keeper of laminated spell notes, making angry additions in red Sharpie. Penny was staring morosely out the window, like he did pretty much anytime he wasn’t in Julia’s orbit —

“Hey, man, fix your shields, and fuck you,” Penny had said, turning to glare. “It’s not like you’re any better when Coldwater isn’t around.”

“True, but I own that about myself,” Eliot had said. “Just consider me stamped with ‘Property of Q Coldwater’ and leave me to my pining when he’s away.”

Margo had rolled her eyes. “Are we getting some yellowtail scallion or what?” she asked, and that was when the knock came.

They all stared at each other, and then Kady stood, hands up, ready to cast battle magic. Margo pulled an ax from where she’d hung it on the side of the kitchen island. Penny saw them and looked exasperated, but Eliot didn’t care. Safe people didn’t generally come to their front door. Being prepared was the difference between a live hero and a dead moron.

Eliot went to the door and opened it, ready to step out of the way of Kady’s battle magic. Behind the door was a very trim-looking accountant type in a gray suit, holding what looked like a handful of theater tickets. He asked, “Is Julia Wicker here?”

Kady asked, “Is that _Harold_?” She came up to the door next to Eliot, and — wait, Eliot had heard this one.

“Harold, the herald of the East River Dragon?” Eliot asked. That had been a great story, one of the only ones that had penetrated his fog of grief and made him want to smile.

The accountant — Harold, apparently — nodded. He said, “My mistress extends a one-time-only invitation of safe passage to the Underworld, for the goddess Julia Wicker and the companions who brought her baby Vito.” He handed the tickets to Eliot.

Penny walked over. “Wait, the _goddess_ Julia Wicker?”

At the same time, Kady asked, “She named the dragon baby Vito?”

Harold frowned. “It’s a very New York name,” he said, almost scolding. “Dragons didn’t have names when my mistress was hatched, so she’s starting a new family tradition.”

“Well, uh, felicitations,” Eliot said weakly. It had only been a few minutes, but already he felt like the conversation had spiraled wildly out of control.

“Yeah, tell her congrats on getting knocked up,” Margo said, hefting the ax. “Now what’s this about Julia the goddess?”

“And why would a dragon give us a free round trip to the Underworld?” Penny asked. “Dragons never give free anything.”

Harold lost his uptight TA vibe and sighed, rubbing his eyebrow. “Honestly? She’s hungry.” He sounded stressed. “Vito is hungry. Their portals aren’t working and they can’t keep anything down. And a hungry dragonet is not a happy creature for a new mother.”

“That sounds bad,” Penny said.

Harold grimaced. “It is bad. I was considering finding a new position, maybe with the Chupacabra of Fort Tryon Park — do _not_ tell her I told you that.”

“No, no, of course not,” Eliot said. The what of fucking _what_?

Harold said, “Anyway, it’s fine now that Julia has come into knowledge of herself. Once the Underworld gets its goddess back people will start dying again, which means the dragon portals will start working again, which means Vito can eat, and I can have job security.” He motioned to the tickets. “Now, I don’t see the odd little man who came with you the last time, or the redheaded sociopath. So if someone else wants a ticket, you can pass them around. But only to people you trust. They’re good until sundown tomorrow, and then my mistress says, if you don’t come find her, she’ll find you.”

He nodded at them all once, turned on his heel and left. Eliot looked at the others, who stared back at him, and he had absolutely no idea what to say.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot gets some good news. Quentin does a card trick.

Quentin didn’t calm down but he did stop crying, and then Alice came back, and she and Julia started to plan. Quentin probably should have paid attention and helped, but he just. Couldn’t focus. Instead he kept his eyes closed, because he needed to feel like he was somewhere small and safe, and he tried to memorize the feeling of Julia’s hand in his, and he reminded himself that they’d been apart for six months at a stretch before.

It sort of helped. Except by then the ocean of grief and despair and blank gray nothing, the one that had been getting more and more restless as the euphoria of being alive again slowly wore off, had risen up over him and carried him away. The inside of his head went foggy.

Julia squeezed his hand, and he opened his eyes. “You okay?” she asked.

“Tired,” he said. “I want Eliot.”

Julia bit her lip and looked at Alice. “It would be better, if we had everybody talking it over.”

“Oh!” Alice said, reaching into her pocket. “Of course —“

Julia grabbed her arm, and the next second they were in the penthouse living room, with everybody staring at them. Margo was holding one of the Sorrows, and Eliot had some papers in his hand. The door to the penthouse was open.

They all stood there in the quiet for a blissful ten seconds, and then Margo said, “Jesus H Outlander Christ, Julia.”

Quentin — sort of shut his brain off, after that. Penny was talking, and Kady, and Alice, but it was so nice not to pay attention, or be afraid, or plan. He let Julia drag him over to Eliot, who looked confused and worried and so, so beautiful, and then she transferred Quentin’s vise-grip from her hand to Eliot’s. Eliot looked from his hand to Quentin’s face, and then said, “Okay, time out for us. Bambi?”

“Go,” Quentin heard Margo say. “We got this.”

And that was. Really nice.

Eliot headed for the staircase and Quentin drifted behind him like a balloon. He lost track a little, but that was okay because Eliot had him. Eliot had seen him like this before, and Eliot had taken care of him every time, and he was so so so grateful. Eliot encouraged him into a pair of sweats and shuffled him under the covers, and curled up close to him, one hand on his face, and started talking while Quentin’s mind filled up with white noise.

After what felt like hours, he began to come back to himself.

"... and then maybe a yarn store," Eliot was saying, when Quentin could listen again. "There's all that angora, that’s nice and soft, and all the different colors. Remember in Fillory, in the winters? Your insides would get dull, you said. I used to wish there was a museum or something I could take you to, to fill you up with color again. So now that we're back, we can go to the Met. I know you don't care about it, because you're a Philistine, but it's got more color than anywhere else in New York. Hey, are you back?”

Quentin took a real, deep breath, and opened his eyes. Eliot was watching him, smiling softly, and he was the best thing Quentin had ever seen. Quentin said, "Too much color." It wasn’t really true, his senses had mostly calmed down, but the idea of going out anywhere made him want to cry.

Eliot rubbed a thumb against his cheekbone. "So we'll make a blanket fort out of gray velvet and cashmere. We can hide away from the world for a while, until things aren't so bright."

And Quentin said, “I love you.”

Eliot’s expression went soft and helpless, his eyebrows up, all fragile surprise like somehow Quentin had been subtle about it and he hadn’t known. Then he got that look on his face, Quentin’s favorite look in the whole world. Two of them in two days, he was so damn lucky. Eliot said, “Okay.”

Quentin reached up, and scritched his fingers in one of Eliot’s sideburns. He loved that, and Eliot’s stubble and his Adam’s apple and his soft deep voice. Eliot’s weirdly long toes, the smell of his skin. Eliot’s beautiful mouth. It soothed something inside of him, that he got to have this again. He found that he could talk about it, the ocean that had swept him away. He said, “Julia’s going to the Underworld.”

Eliot said, “Yeah, I heard.”

Quentin said, “I’m — a little fucked up about it.”

Eliot snorted. “Yeah, baby, I noticed.”

Baby. Eliot didn’t pull out pet names very often. He seemed to find them too revealing, almost dangerous, like if anyone heard him calling Quentin ‘sweetheart’ they’d know exactly where to stick the knife. So when he did forget himself and use them, it felt really good. It felt like proof that Eliot cared so much he couldn’t stop himself.

Quentin said, “I know it’s different from me. I know that. But it doesn’t feel different.”

“No,” Eliot said.

“It doesn’t feel different from when the Monster had you, and, and I didn’t know if you’d get killed, and I didn’t know what to do, or how to stop it. And.” He ran out of words.

Eliot watched him with big eyes, looking so sad. He ran his thumb over Quentin’s mouth, tracing the curve of it. He nudged his knees against Quentin’s.

And then it turned out that Quentin had more words after all. “I’m not okay,” he said. “The last few months have been.” He swallowed. “Difficult.”

Eliot leaned in and pressed a long, soft kiss to his forehead. Then he pulled Quentin in and wrapped his arms around Quentin and held him close. “Okay,” he said. “Well, I’m here, so you don’t have to do this part on your own.” He kissed the top of Quentin’s head.

Quentin closed his eyes.

—-

Eliot left Quentin sleeping, bundled up in about a million blankets, the pile of them around his curled-up body looking like a dumpling in the middle of the bed. He considered falling asleep along with Quentin, but instead he went down the trashy spiral staircase to check on everybody else, and he hoped they were fucking grateful for it.

When he got to the living room, everything seemed to have mostly settled out. Margo and Alice were sitting side by side, arguing over something Alice was writing. Penny was watching Julia with tragic eyes, and she was visibly ignoring him and talking quietly with Kady. The two of them were holding hands. Julia looked up when Eliot came over to the couches. “Q?” she asked.

“Sleeping,” he said. “Seems like the past few — everything, hit him all at once.” Julia nodded. Eliot pointed to the paper Alice and Margo were fighting over. “Is that a contract?”

“More like a list of requirements,” Alice said.

Margo said, “Nobody’s fucking signing any contracts.”

Penny threw his hands up and said, “Then how do you have any idea he’ll do any of this?”

“Look,” Margo said. She grabbed Alice’s pen and threw it down on the coffee table. Alice, looking irritated, picked it up again. “Like I told you before. If Hades doesn’t give two shits about the multiverse, nothing we say is gonna change his mind. We’ll have tickets the fuck out of there, and we can regroup and come up with a plan. But if he _does_ give two shits…”

Julia said, “Then there’s no reason for him not to do what we ask.”

Eliot — wasn’t quite sure that was a guarantee. In his experience, gods worked against their own interests more often than not, even if it fucked them. But Margo had a handle on it, and he was fine providing moral support and looking pretty, so he nodded.

“I still don’t like this,” Penny said, and wow that was a bad idea.

“Yeah, well it’s not your fucking decision this time, is it?” Julia snapped.

Penny bit his lip and looked away.

After a minute, Margo said, “The other thing we need to talk about is the tickets.”

Kady said, “I’d like to go,” and of course, she wanted to see Penny 40 if she could.

“We have four free,” Julia said, “And mine.”

Penny said, “I’d like to go, too.”

Julia looked at him, a long piercing look, and then she nodded. “The other two were for Quentin and Poppy.”

Eliot looked at Margo, and then Alice. He honestly had no idea which way Quentin would jump on this. Margo said, “El, if you’re going I’m going.”

And that — if Quentin decided he wanted to go, Eliot wanted, more than anything, to be there with him. But if it had been Margo who was taken by the Monster, and Margo he’d just gotten back, and Margo who he’d fought for, for months and months, he’d feel the same as she did. And the idea of going to the Underworld without her was horrible. He nodded.

“Okay,” Alice said, brisk. “If Quentin wants a ticket, I get the other ticket. If he doesn’t, it’s Eliot and Margo.”

Eliot looked at her, and she nodded at him. She’d tear the Underworld to pieces before she’d let Quentin get hurt again. He relaxed, and went back upstairs and cuddled up under the blanket dumpling with Quentin, breathing in the smell of his hair.

—-

When Quentin woke up again, he felt less foggy, and everything was already decided. “You’re really doing this,” he said to Julia.

Julia had a battle light in her eyes. She said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Quests are bullshit, premonitions are bullshit, destiny is bullshit.”

He’d never told her about the coronation and his little speech to Eliot, but somehow she knew him all the way through anyway. Or maybe he was just a reflection of her, and always had been. The idea pleased him, in a distant way. Someday he’d have to get a notebook and catalog all the Julia-things about himself, add them up.

“But I’m going to do this,” Julia said, “and I’m going to make it work. And fuck any person or any god who tries to stop me.”

Quentin had to hug her, then. Six months without her wasn’t so bad, he told himself. Not if she got to be fierce and blazing and happy like this the whole time.

He didn’t really pay attention to the preparations, beyond putting himself back into his sweater and jeans, and making sure he had eyes on Julia as much as possible. She had offered him a ticket to the Underworld and he had physically recoiled, so he had until they reached the docks to be near her.

Eliot came over while he was sitting, and looped an arm around his shoulders. “How are you holding up?” he asked.

That was another thing he didn’t want to think about. “Do you have to go?” he asked.

Eliot blew out a breath and looked at him. “How not-calm will you be if I go?”

Quentin would be pretty fucking not-calm, but he didn’t want to say it. He picked at a loose thread on his jeans. “I guess I don’t understand why you want to,” he said.

Eliot frowned and stared off into space, thoughtful. “I’m. Not really sure. I think I want to be there for Julia. And I want to see the place that stole you away, and _know_ it’s not getting you back. But mostly, I just want to, and I’m not sure why.” He hummed a little, tunelessly, under his breath, and then glanced at Quentin. Then he did one of Quentin’s favorite things, a thing Quentin never knew how to ask for, and that he was always baffled that Eliot, a born theater kid, didn’t do more of: he began, very quietly, to sing.

“‘There’s a ring around the moon,’” he sang, curling his free hand up with Quentin’s and pulling him close with the arm around his shoulders. “‘I’m gonna fly all night down to see you. I’m gonna fly all night down to see you. There’s a light inside my chest, that switched on when we first met, and it will not let me rest.’”

And somehow, it was easier to breathe after that, and easier to think about Eliot and Julia going to the Underworld without him.

They all ate dinner together. Margo complained that she’d never gotten her yellowtail scallion rolls, so they ordered sushi, which was possibly Quentin’s least-favorite thing besides garbanzo beans. But the restaurant also had oyaku-don so he was fine. He ate his eggy chicken and rice and watched everyone else eat their raw fish, which was disgusting and he wasn’t kissing Eliot again until Eliot brushed his teeth. Eliot gave him a look, like he knew what Quentin was thinking, and chewed at him aggressively.

Quentin slowly sidled up to the idea that things might be okay.

Then it was time to go to the dock. They decided to walk instead of taking the Penny express. It was a ways: all the way across Manhattan and north to 20th Street, near the Stuyvesant Cove Ferry. The air was shimmery with twilight and warmth, and it almost didn’t smell like garbage, and there weirdly weren’t too many people out, and not a one of them seemed to care about the very tiny zombie apocalypse that was about to be averted, and it was — nice. To feel small. To be reminded that the world was bigger than him and his friends.

He held Julia’s hand up until they got to Murphy Playground, and then he squeezed it once and let go, and grabbed Eliot, pulling him to a stop next to the chain link fence. Eliot said, “Not that I’m not glad to be holding hands, Q, but we’re on a bit of a clock.”

“Yeah, just,” Quentin scrubbed a hand through his hair. He’d been thinking and thinking for hours, and Eliot probably knew everything he was going to say, but he didn’t like the idea of Eliot going to the Underworld without him saying it at least once, so. “Just, I have a story, too, okay?”

Eliot raised his eyebrows. “Okay,” he said. He began to smile.

Quentin said, “You can look at me, because I’m not an asshole,” and Eliot ducked his head, looking bashful and delighted. “But maybe. Don’t say anything until I get it out.”

Eliot nodded.

Quentin took a breath. “I, I had this friend, too,” he said. “He was the brightest thing in the whole world. He was so good to me, and being around him felt so good. I loved him before I understood what was happening, and I don’t want to stop." Eliot was looking at him like — three of those looks now, since he’d come back. Quentin would get spoiled. He wanted to be spoiled. Quentin said, “And then he got taken away. And. And. And I would have killed gods to get him back. I would have set the multiverse on fire. I didn’t _care_. And now I have him again, and just — you have to come back to me, El. Okay? Whatever you need to do, to come back. So.”

He had sort of had an end to that story, when he was planning it out in his head. But, like with most things in his life, coherence kind of crawled backwards out the window to get away from him. Eliot didn’t seem to mind. He took a sharp breath in, like he’d been hurt, and then he gathered Quentin up and kissed him. It was just about the dirtiest kiss Quentin had ever had out in public, and he got lost in it, pushing up on his toes, up against Eliot’s mouth, every part of him straining to touch and saying, Yes, yes, yes.

It was amazing, until he heard yells in the distance. Eliot froze, hands tightening on Quentin's shoulders. Quentin turned his head and saw a trio of high-school kids on skateboards, standing in the tennis court at the far end of Murphy Playground, cheering and waving their hands. “Holler!” they yelled. “Free show!”

Quentin felt himself turn bright red. Eliot relaxed, smacking a kiss to the side of Quentin’s face and saying, “We should probably go catch up to the others.” The skateboarding kids made disappointed sounds when he and Eliot didn’t start kissing again, and then zoomed off, hopefully to go annoy some uptight society matrons somewhere. Eliot pulled Quentin by the hand, and they made their way across the highway to the docks.

Julia was talking to the dragon when they got there, waving her arms around, and she already looked like she ran the place. Quentin saw: Harold at his desk, an empty patch of dock big enough for five people to lie down, and a little folding table set up with a couple of chairs. Alice was already sitting at one chair, and she gave him a tiny smile when she saw him. He breathed in, and out.

“Okay,” Penny said. “So how do we do this?”

Julia looked at Quentin. “The last time, our bodies kind of stayed here.”

“I had a bruise on my shoulder from where I fell,” Quentin reminded her.

“Yeah, we’re going to want to lie down,” Julia said.

It was so quick. One minute she was hugging him so hard that he couldn’t breathe, then Eliot was touching his hand and saying, quietly, "I promise, okay?" Then the five of them lay down on the dock, and the dragon breathed orange mist over them, and then they all fell asleep.

Quentin felt the fist squeezing his chest again, but it was going to be okay. Eliot had promised, and Julia would be back, and all he had to do was hang out for a couple hours with --

Oh.

He looked at Alice, and she fidgeted and nodded to the other chair. He sat, and said, “Uh.” Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to him that with everybody gone, he’d be here with just Alice.

He said, "Um, hey," and, okay, maybe this was good. Maybe they could talk, for real, not about everything but at least about the important stuff. Alice's face did something that was kind of a smile, and she leaned forward, and he said, "I was, um, thinking."

Then the East River Dragon swung her massive head in their direction, staring at them with her weird red lizard eyes and breathing little puffs of smoke out of her nostrils, looking mythic and impossible and a little peeved, and oh fucking well, there went that idea.

The dragon said, “I hate this part. It’s always so boring.”

Quentin glanced at Alice, and she stared back, helpless. Okay, then, he thought. He took out a pack of cards. “Want to learn some tricks?” he asked.

—-

Down, down, down in the elevator, the five of them trapped together and mostly okay with it. The light was really bright and ugly, but it was still, somehow, not as awful as the Library. Julia put her hand on the wall and tapped her fingers. She said, “Okay, so we should probably —“

The elevator dinged, and the door opened to an empty hallway.

“Well, I guess we just. Go for a walk, then,” Julia said.

They walked out of the elevator, Julia in the lead, but after a few steps she gasped and stopped in the middle of the hallway. "Shoshana," she said.

Next to him, he heard Kady whisper, “Mom?”

Eliot blinked, and then Logan Kinnear was in the hallway with him. It was. He was.

Logan was so small, was the thing. He’d only been fourteen, and he hadn’t had any defenses against Eliot. Not the real Eliot, the one who could do magic. Eliot looked at him and felt anger, and shame, and pity. All the emotions he’d stirred up in the happy place, and thought he’d dealt with. He wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t move.

Margo grabbed his wrist, digging her fingernails in. She asked, “El, are you seeing this?” Her voice was trembling.

“I’m seeing something,” he said. Logan just watched him, silent. He looked like he had the day before Eliot had killed him. He had a terrible aughts haircut, and cheap clothes like you’d get at Walmart, and pimples, and he'd been horrific but he’d also been just a person. Eliot thought, I shouldn't have done that to you. He thought, I don't hate myself for it anymore, but I don’t forgive you, either. He thought, I hope you're okay down here.

A feeling like a steel band around his chest, that he hadn't even realized was squeezing him, released all at once. He sagged into Margo and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, feeling lightheaded. She clung back.

Julia’s voice cut through his thoughts like a whip-crack. “Is this another fucking test?” she asked. “You’d think you motherfuckers would have learned your lesson by now.”

A test? Eliot swallowed, and tried to get a grip on himself. Goddamn gods.

Logan disappeared. The hallway disappeared. Instead they were in a windowless, corporate-looking conference room. He stumbled, feeling off-balance and hollowed-out, and Margo went with him. She still had his arm in her painful talon grip, and he was so insanely grateful for it. He held her close.

“What the fuck was that?” Kady asked. Penny was covering his face with his hands. Julia looked angry enough to blow out the walls on the conference room. She was standing next to a conference table, holding the back of a wheely chair, and glaring at the ceiling. Eliot squeezed Margo tighter.

“ _Well_?” Julia bitched at the ceiling. Eliot was grateful for her too.

The table was the same washed-out brown-gray as everything else. It was empty, and then suddenly two of the chairs were occupied. At the head of the table, Eliot saw a handsome black man in a gray Librarian suit and a pink shirt. Next to him, watching all of them with a troubled expression, was Penny 40.

Kady said, “Penny, I swear to god —“

The man at the head of the conference table raised a hand and said, “You’ll have to excuse me, Kady. Those visions were my doing.”

Kady rounded on him. “Yeah? And who the fuck are you?”

“Hades,” Julia said. Oh shit.

Hades inclined his head. He was definitely the most regal god Eliot had met so far, and he had an odd, knowing smile that made Eliot want his attention, and also made Eliot want to hide. Eliot felt, suddenly, that they were very badly outgunned.

“Sit down, Julia,” Hades motioned to the wheely chair she had a grip on, and she yanked back her hand as if it burned. “Let’s talk.”

Julia sat, and then Kady, and then the rest of them. There were exactly seven chairs around the conference table, one for each of them. Eliot’s was the perfect height and felt like sitting on a ergonomic cloud. He was still shaky from seeing Logan Kinnear, and when he looked over he saw tear tracks on Margo’s face. He wondered, for a moment, who Margo had seen, and knew he would never ask. Julia said, “That was messed up. There was no reason for it."

“My apologies,” Hades said. “I needed to see what you would do, when faced with shame. Consider it a job interview.”

“Yeah, well you were being interviewed, too,” Julia said, “and you fucking failed.”

Hades smiled. “My wife chose well when she chose you, I will admit. You’ve had this strength your whole life, and this compassion. And ever since that incident with Quentin and the hospital when you were nineteen,” Eliot twitched and stared, and Hades flicked a glance at him that made him feel stripped down to his bones, “you’ve had a remarkable desire to fight for others. It almost glows within you.”

Julia lifted her chin. “Are you done?” she asked. Eliot realized, in that moment, that the negotiation had already started. He looked at Margo, at Kady, at Penny 23, but none of them seemed any more able to jump in than he was. It wasn’t a spell that stopped him, or at least no spell that he could recognize. He just — felt in his bones that this wasn’t his fight. All their planning, all their effort, and it was just up to Julia, now. He couldn’t even open his mouth to wish her luck. “Because it’s boring,” she said.

Penny 40 steepled his fingers, and put them over his mouth. His eyes crinkled up just the tiniest bit.

Hades said, “I’m almost done. I will also say, that I sincerely hope you understand the magnitude of the responsibility before you.” He spread his hands and leaned back in his chair. “Humans have such short, meaningless lives, and they cause more havoc than a branch in the spokes of a bicycle. I would love to trust that you can do this, but I’m afraid that’s not a luxury I can afford. Convince me.” He sounded like a Wall Street dirtbag — or a god.

Julia looked furious, and Eliot thought he saw a faint yellow light behind her eyes. “You want me to _convince_ you that I deserve this. A job interview, you said, right?”

Hades tipped his head to the side.

“Well, I don’t,” Julia said.

Hades raised his eyebrows. Penny 40’s smile grew too big to hide behind his steepled fingers.

Julia said, “But neither did she. She was reckless, she was irresponsible, she ran away from her problems, she allowed people to be hurt. And none of you care. Short, meaningless lives? Fuck you. You’re the god of the Underworld. That means every single soul that lives, whether it’s for three seconds or three thousand years, is your responsibility. How can you have so little consideration for them?”

Hades shrugged. “Why should I worry about their lives up there? Once they get here, they’re all my children, and I care for all of them.”

“That’s not what I saw,” Julia said, picking up steam. “Why don’t you reunite shades with their people? Why can’t Richard see his son? Why are there thousands of souls stuck in bowling alleys and hotel lobbies, instead of being processed and moving on?” She glanced at Penny 40, and her eyebrows went up. “Why is it only the dead who are sent through the Library that you seem to care about?”

Hades flicked a glance at Penny 40, and Penny 40 disappeared. Kady jumped halfway out of her seat. “Penny!” she yelled.

Hades said, “He can come back when the interview is over. It’s unfair of him to feed you information that might influence my choice.”

Julia leaned back in her chair. The yellow light behind her eyes was growing brighter. Eliot felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. “I think you made your choice. I think we wouldn’t have been able to get down here if you hadn’t already decided.”

Hades gave her an obnoxious, smug smile. “You think very highly of me if you believe I can control dragons,” he said.

Julia shook her head, looking angrier still. Eliot heard a buzzing sound, and felt the air pressure drop. He grabbed onto the arms of his office chair. Julia said, “You could have stopped Harold from coming to find us. You could have stopped Suzanne from talking to me at the Library, but you didn’t. You _need_ me to be Persephone, and you want me to feel grateful for it. Well, _fuck_ you.”

Hades looked at her, and her eyes grew brighter and brighter until they shone with goddess-light, until it filled up her whole body, glowing under her skin, and she looked like she had swallowed the sun. She gasped, and stared at her hands, and Eliot remembered, suddenly, the moment he’d first seen her in the mirror world. Oh, he thought. So that’s what that was.

Hades said, “Well done, Julia.”

Eliot found that he could speak again. “Yeah, that’s a little patronizing, don’t you think?” he asked.

Hades frowned at him, and Eliot resisted the urge to hold out his hand for a smack from a ruler. What the fucking fuck was with this place? Then Hades’s eyebrow twitched, and Eliot’s naughty-schoolboy feeling disappeared. “I apologize,” Hades said, turning back to Julia. “Force of habit.”

Julia said, “You’ll have to change some habits.” Her voice was doing that goddess-thing he remembered, going slow and wondrous and knowing. She looked at the rest of them, and said, “I think we can continue negotiations without them, yes? They have things to do down here.”

Uh, that was not a good idea. Eliot sat up in his chair and raised his hand.

“No,” Kady said.

Margo said, “Now, wait just a fucking minute —“

Then they were standing in the hallway near the elevator out of the Underworld, the four of them and Penny 40, all staring at each other.

"Fuck!" Margo said.

“Uh, hey, guys,” Penny 40 said.

“Penny!” Kady yelled. He got the biggest, most beautiful smile on his face, so at odds with his buttoned-up Librarian suit, and he ran to her and spun her around, hugging her and kissing the side of her head. He pulled her away from the others toward the elevator, and they started talking, looking intense. There must have been some magic in the hallway, because Eliot couldn’t hear a word.

He grinned. Love wins, he thought. He looked for Margo, thinking of sharing the happiness, and saw that she was near tears again. “Bambi,” he said, “come here.”

He pulled her further down the hallway, away from the rest of the action, and then he stopped and held her face in his hands. “We’re going to get you back there,” he promised.

She said, “I know.” That might have been true, but she sure didn’t sound like it. Eliot had been falling down on best friend duty for a while now, but he promised himself it would stop today.

Eliot said, “I’m fine, I’ve got the beautiful romcom ending I always wanted.” He spoke lightly, with as much gentle self-mockery as he could muster. But Margo knew him all the way down to the ground, and she gave him one of those small, delighted smiles she seemed to store up just for him. "Julia’s leveled up, the rest of us are safe. It's time to take care of you."

Margo didn't answer, just looked at him. She was extraordinary, this woman. A part of his soul. He was so lucky to have met her. 

He said, "You would do anything to keep me safe? Well, watch me do anything to make you happy, including fucking up some off-brand Lannister from _West Loria_ , if she gives Fen shit for letting you come back."

Margo laughed, still a little shaky. He had never seen her care about anything the way she cared about Fillory, and if he had to tear out some hair or pick up another goddamn sword to get her back in that throne room, he'd fucking do it. She said, "Maybe Fen doesn't want me to come back."

"Please," he said. Because really.

Margo laughed again, less shaky this time, and said, "You know, legally she's a widow."

"That's the spirit," he told her, kissing her forehead. Then he pulled her close. "Less crying, more scheming. We should have a plan ready to execute by the weekend."

Margo grabbed his tie with one hand and the back of his shirt with the other, and held on.

Time was weird in the Underworld, but he thought they stood there for a while. Long enough for him to relax into holding her. Then Julia and Hades were back in the hallway, and suddenly it felt like only a minute since they'd been kicked out of the conference room. Kady separated from Penny 40, looking teary but all right, and Penny 23 watched Julia with a dazed, sad expression that made Eliot feel kind of bad for him. Penny 40 took one last look at Kady, and disappeared.

Julia went up to Penny 23 and whispered something to him, and he sighed and nodded. She squeezed his hand, and he looked — lighter, somehow. Like he was going to be okay. Hades looked at Julia and tipped his head.

Julia said, "Q's alive," she said, in her remote goddess way. "They all are, the lucky accidents. No conditions, no catch.”

Eliot had hoped, he'd believed, but hearing it still made him feel light with relief, like he could float away.

Julia said, "I’ll return in six months, but you can call on me before then. If you need me, I’ll come.”

Kady asked, "Call on you as what? Do we just yell 'Julia', and you'll pop in?"

Julia gave them the goddess equivalent of a smile, that benevolent faraway look, but there was as thread of sadness in it, too. "Call on Our Lady of Rest,” she said.

She looked at each one of them, and when Eliot met her eyes it felt like someone had bathed his forehead in cool water. Next to him, Margo gave a quiet sigh. “I’m going to be good here, guys. There’s a lot of good work to do.” She took a breath, then, looking teary and happy and _human_ , and said, "You all are so incredible, and I am so grateful to know you."

Julia began to dissolve into warm golden light, and Eliot watched her, dazzled. Then all of a sudden he remembered the other thing he'd been planning to ask them.

"Wait!" he said.

Julia stopped mid-dissolve, looking unimpressed, and Hades raised an eyebrow at him.

"What about —" Eliot waved a hand at his abdomen, where he'd had a gaping ax wound not four days ago. Was it gone for good? Was it coming back? What had even happened?

Hades said, exasperated, "I have no idea. You people get yourselves into so much weird shit, nobody can keep up." He vanished.

Julia grimaced and shook her head. "I don't know," she said. “Sorry.”

Eliot looked at Margo, who stared back, astonished, and then he said, "No. No worrying about it for at least twenty-four hours."

Julia started dissolving again. "Six months. Put it on your calendar."

"Yeah, we'll. Schedule a meeting," Kady said.

Then Julia was gone.

The four of them looked at each other. "That was a little anti-climactic," Margo said. "Can I say that?"

Eliot pressed kiss to her hair. "The curse of being the most interesting people in the room," he told her.

Penny 23 sniffed and wiped his nose. "Let's just get out of here," he said.

Suddenly, Eliot was desperate to get back to the land of the living. To coffee and sunlight and stomach aches and the public bus. To dance clubs and nightmares and getting older. To sex, and love, and the kindest man in the whole goddamn world. To his future.

"Yeah," Eliot said. "I think we've done enough here, don't you?"

They got in the elevator, and made their way back to the living world.

—-

Quentin taught the East River Dragon Texas hold 'em, blackjack, rummy 500, push, and all the card tricks he'd learned from third grade to fifth grade. It was a lot of card tricks, which was fun, and trying to keep an ancient, fire-breathing creature entertained had a remarkable focusing effect on him. He was almost zen by the time the dragon got bored of them and went — somewhere underwater, possibly back to Vito. Then Harold went home, and Quentin and Alice were left, actually, alone.

Alice cleared her throat. "You seem happy."

Quentin squinted at her. She had clocked his anxiety attack from earlier, yes?

Alice said, "With Eliot, I mean.”

Oh. “Well, yeah,” Quentin said. “I love him.”

Alice looked — genuinely happy for him, and also a little sad, and pretty awkward about all of it. He was mostly too tired to care one way or the other, but the happiness was nice. “That’s good,” she said.

“Yeah, I,” he shook his head and laughed.

“What?” she asked.

Quentin said, “I was going to say I feel lucky. Is that weird? I’m such a mess, and I’ve got all this, this _broken_ inside of me, and I feel lucky because I’m dating a boy.” He looked over at his friends, lying on the dock. Even looking at Eliot’s blank, sleeping face sent a little thrill through him.

“I don’t think it’s weird,” Alice said. She had that tone he remembered, where she was reasoning her way toward telling him he was fine, just the way he was. Only Alice could make reassuring someone into a thesis project. It was so kind, and spiky, just like she was, and he realized that he had missed her friendship terribly. “I had all these awful things happen to me, and I've done awful things, and I lost so much. And I feel lucky now because I have a job.”

Quentin said, “You and I are very different people.” A job, for fuck’s sake. A _job_. Then he sat up straight in his folding chair, because, “Wait, what job?”

Alice opened her mouth, looking sheepish, and then Julia’s sleeping form started dissolving into a cloud of warm golden light. It was beautiful, bright and clean in the night air, outshining the street lamps and the flood light on the dock. Quentin watched it, the way it looked like a swarm of fireflies, and he thought about how much he’d miss her. His eyes started prickling.

He thought he heard her voice in the back of his mind. “Six months,” she said. “Put it on your calendar.”

Six months, and then he’d get to see her again. She was going to be so amazing at this. “Okay, Jules,” he promised.

Less than a minute after that, Kady took a huge gasping breath and sat up, clutching her head. “Oh my god,” she said.

Oh, yeah. “The, uh, the Underworld hangover goes away after a few minutes.”

Kady scowled at him. “And you didn’t think to warn us _before_ we went down there?”

“I’m sorry?” he said, baffled. Would they not have gone?

Penny gasped, and rolled over onto his face on the dock. Margo started coughing. Then Eliot —

Eliot.

Eliot put his hands over his face and started laughing. God, Quentin loved him. He felt almost sick with affection, watching Eliot while he rocked from side to side on the dock and laughed into his hands.

“The fuck is with you?” Margo asked, sitting up. “Ow, my head.”

Eliot said, “It’s so awful.” God, his voice. Eliot kept laughing, turning over onto his side and curling into a ball. “Oh god. Why did we do that.” His laughter tapered off into giggles. “We can never, ever do that again. Oh, god.”

“You’ll get no argument from me,” Kady said, staggering upright. She reached down a hand and helped Penny up. Then she glanced over at Quentin, and some of his frantic adoration must have shown in his face, because she grabbed Penny’s sleeve and started dragging him away.

Margo leaned over Eliot. He was still bursting into giggles sporadically. He still had his hands over his eyes. “El, you okay?”

Eliot took one hand off his face and flapped it at her. “Fine. I just feel like the top of my head came off. Don’t worry.” Quentin wanted to lie on the dock next to him. He strained forward in his chair.

Margo rolled her eyes. “Well, okay, as long as it’s nothing too dramatic.” She caught sight of Quentin and gave him a look, like, ‘Okay, he’s your problem, now.’ Quentin was very, very happy to have that problem.

“Okay, up,” Margo said. She pulled Eliot so that he was sitting upright, his hands still covering his face, and she leaned against him. Then she motioned to Quentin and — _oh_ , yeah, he could go over there if he wanted to.

He absolutely wanted to.

“Alice,” he said, turning to her. They had been talking about, about — oh, her job, and now —

“Go,” she said. She was smiling.

Quentin got up, stumbling, a little stiff from sitting down for so long. He walked over to where Eliot was taking deep, calming breaths. Margo nodded at him, and ran her hand over Eliot’s forehead, and said, "Whatever lamaze shit you have to do, you better hurry the fuck up, because we need to start planning my triumphant return."

Her voice was — something must have happened in the Underworld, because she sounded better than she had since Quentin had come back. Whatever it was, he was glad. He reached them, and Margo grabbed his hand and smacked a kiss to the back of it. He looked at her, surprised, but she just pulled him down so he was kneeling on the wooden dock in front of them. This close, he could see the perfect, intricate knot of Eliot’s tie, could smell Eliot’s cologne and look at his beautiful hands. Please, Quentin thought suddenly, please let me be this close forever. He had a moment of blinding gratitude, that he got to have two whole lifetimes with this man.

He said, “Hey, El.” His voice was a little shaky, but mostly fine. Quentin himself was a little shaky — ha, definitely more than a little. But maybe, he thought, maybe he’d be mostly fine, too, someday. “Hey, welcome back.”

Eliot lifted his head and opened his eyes. He looked at Quentin, and he smiled. “Hi, baby,” he said, voice soft and filled with feeling. He reached for Quentin, holding Quentin’s face in his big, gentle hands, and pulled him in, and kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> [The song](https://youtu.be/Md1dPImUmaU) Eliot sings is “Amen” by Jolie Holland. It’s my favorite song in the whole world.
> 
> [This](https://youtu.be/26-1t15R_MU) is modern competitive lindy hop. Lindy is an African American vernacular dance which lost popularity in the second half of the twentieth century, and then was brought back during the Swing Kids, Jump Jive & Wail craze in the 90s. Frankie Manning fronted the dance group Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, who can be seen in the 1940s movie [Hellzapoppin](https://youtu.be/YFpU5ypLrKQ) being fucking amazing. He's pretty much considered king of lindy, and he invented a ton of moves.
> 
> These are the [Loose Marbles](https://youtu.be/73-aJlPKJgc). I don’t think they’ve actually played in Washington Square Park since it was renovated a couple of years ago, and I don’t know who’s left the band since then, but I don’t caaaaaaare I love them. There _are_ two dancers who are part of the band, but I don’t know anything about them, I made up Jimmy and Miranda.
> 
> [This](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenaculum) is a tenaculum. Obgyns use them to hold women’s uteruses in place so they can perform procedures like IUD insertion. They’re horrific.
> 
> I have never seen [Indecent Proposal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indecent_Proposal) but I remember that money-on-the-bed scene from watching the trailers when I was a kid.
> 
> [Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends](https://youtu.be/GZiB_S9VpiU) is a cartoon from the mid-aughts about a boy named Mac, whose mom made him stick his imaginary friend Bloo in an imaginary friend orphanage (just go with it), and Mac keeps sneaking away to visit Bloo and have adventures. It is bonkers and adorable.
> 
> The idea of Julia as Persephone is a fandom idea; I claim no ownership. I just saw it posted on Tumblr somewhere, loved it, and ran with it.
> 
> The Master’s thesis Eliot and Darla found was on the psychological benefits of partner dancing. Eliot slipped that one into the pile just in case.
> 
> (Quentin goes back later to read the books Eliot got him.)
> 
> They finally had breakfast burritos! I have been promising this since my first Magicians fic. Sorry it took so long.


End file.
